Contour Plots in Excel with XLSTAT

Dataset to Generate a Contour Plot

The data are fictitious data representing the topography of a volcano on a 10 m by 10 m grid. The X and Y columns are therefore the coordinates of the grid, and the altitude column represents the altitude at each point of the grid.

Goal of this Tutorial

The goal of this tutorial is to visualize the topography of a volcano in a simple way. XLSTAT will allow you to do this very quickly with a contour plot.

Setting Up a Contour Plot in XLSTAT

• Once XLSTAT is open, select the XLSTAT / Data visualization / Contour plots menu.

• The dialog box pops up. On the General tab, select column A in field X, column B in field Y, and column C in field Z.

• Then, different options are available to personalize the chart in different ways. Select the following options:

Interpreting a Contour Plot

First, we display the contour plot.

You can see the different altitude zones very quickly. On the right side of the plot, a low area represents the beginning of the plain. The other areas surround the volcano up to its summit with an altitude which increases gradually, until reaching the center of the summit where the altitude drops suddenly.
To see the shape of the volcano more clearly, you can display the plot as a 3D surface.

In this way we identify the same conclusions as made with the 2D contour plot with the plain on the right, and the different altitude zones up to the summit of the volcano.
In our example, the data is sufficient to have a good view of the volcano. In some cases, when there is very little data or missing data at some points on the grid, XLSTAT allows you to perform an interpolation (bilinear or bicubic) of the points and thus make the graph more readable.