Click here to see the SAS code.
Click here to see the example.

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Stephen Few (DM Review author) had taken one of the SAS/Graph SUGI 27 java graph examples,
and used that as an example of a 'bad graph' (Stephen Few's page).
He suggested a simpler and more elegant way to plot the data.

This example shows how to do the original (bad) graph, and then 
shows the sas code to produce Stephen's improved version, and 
then takes it a step further and provides a version that might 
be useful for scientists doing analytic work with this data.

To produce a version like Stephen's, I annotate the table of data 
below the graph, and the names of the cities beside the lines.

To produce the "Ultra-Analytic" version, I also annotate winter,
spring, summer, and fall season labels, and provide reflines between
each season, and at the freezing temperature.  I also use a format
to make the temperatures print with the degree symbol beside them.
And, I use tickmarks to show the beginning/ending of each month.
I show markers at each data value (so the viewer knows which are
the values, and which are the interpolated lines), and I added a
charttip and drilldown to each marker (click on a marker, and it
will do a web drilldown to find info about the average temperature
for that city).  I add color swatches beside the annotated table,
and print the city name to the right of the table (both these visual
cues make it easier to tie the tables to the lines).

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