I need to make a very intricate graph. What's a good program to use?

what format do you have the data in? Usually it is possible to easily import data into Excel or an Excel type program

If your data is not in electronic form, you’re most likely going to have to type it in anyway

i have to type it in—- it’s based on a piece of music—- but I still need to find a good program to do it in

if the data for the lines are a series of x,y coordinates, it shouldnt matter how many lines you have or the range of the axes. Excel would be good, each line would be its own series, you would have to enter the data a:

Line 1 | Line 2 | Line 3 etc.
x1 | y1 | x1 | y1 | x1 | y1
x2 | y2 | x2 | y2 | x2 | y2
x3 | y3 | x3 | y3 | x3 | y3
etc. | etc. | etc.

I had good sucess with this:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28713

(Program called Plot)

Edward Tufte uses various mathematical programs to do the analysis, then takes the output file into Quark or Illustrator to make it pretty. There are very very few programs (none?) that actually do good analysis/graphing AND design standards…

I have always heard good things about gnuplot http://www.gnuplot.info/