Below is the average time taken for a robot to process a single request on any given day. I am trying to plot this on an excel chart but I am having trouble formatting. I want the date on the x axis and the processing time on the y axis. Any advice would be appreciated.
11/23/2017 0:02:40
11/24/2017 0:02:33
11/25/2017 0:02:54
11/26/2017 0:02:50
11/27/2017 0:03:01
11/28/2017 0:02:42
11/29/2017 0:03:07
11/30/2017 0:02:42
12/1/2017 0:02:55
Create a line chart. With the data in two columns, make sure there is a header row. Delete any content in the date header, so the cell is blank. If there is text in the column header, Excel will try to plot the dates as numbers, and that is not what you want.
Click any cell in the table and insert a line chart. By default, if Excel recognizes a date for the X axis values, it will plot the data on a timeline. In the screenshot, notice that there is a gap of a few days and the chart plots the data correctly per day.
Related
On a data/line plot inside Excel, I'd like to color my data points depending on a value inside the table on the same row as the data value, however from a different column.
It's best explained with a picture:
It's essentially a line chart type with the lines removed, and the data points set to bullet type and given an increased radius for visibility. The x-axis denotes the calendar date as dd.mm, and the y-axis contains the values.
Now the Excel table also contains a row called "Time of Day", which can be mo(rning), mi(dday), ev(ening).
Can something like this be done with a line chart, or do I need to use a different type of chart, or is this generally not possible in Excel (which I doubt)?
Excel in use is: Microsoft Excel for Mac, Version 16.51 (21071101).
Here's a way to achieve this:
What I've done is:
Added three columns for the times of day (columns B, C and D). These can be hidden.
Added this formula in B2: =IF($E2=B$1,$F2,NA()) which should then be dragged to cover the next two columns and then down to cover every day.
Selected A1:D11 (it'll be more than 11 on your version)
Went to Insert > Chart > Insert Line or Area Chart > Line With Markers
At this point you have a line chart with three series (mo, mi, ev). The lines can be removed, which just leaves the markers. You can format each series separately, with different colours, shapes, sizes, etc.
As a special bonus, this automatically gives you a legend that explains the colours.
I want to plot a simple chart with Date on the X axis and Number on my Y axis. Tried XY scatter but Excel try to be smart and hide my data labels.
Also, Excel tried to re-order my Date which I do not want.
Date POS
22/10/2017 7
01/10/2017 14
08/09/2017 8
11/08/2017 6
28/07/2017 4
09/07/2017 3
26/06/2017 4
09/06/2017 11
19/05/2017 8
23/04/2017 8
02/04/2017 5
19/03/2017 1
19/02/2017 3
05/02/2017 10
30/01/2017 8
08/01/2017 3
20/11/2016 13
11/11/2016 7
28/10/2016 12
16/10/2016 5
30/09/2016 7
16/09/2016 3
27/08/2016 8
14/08/2016 13
24/07/2016 3
17/07/2016 7
17/06/2016 2
27/05/2016 4
24/04/2016 16
10/04/2016 1
27/03/2016 2
04/03/2016 4
19/02/2016 4
24/01/2016 1
03/01/2016 1
Would like to see everything. Is it possible ?
Thanks.
To answer your questions:
Brief:
1) You can't see all your data labels on the X axis unless you format the X axis to have major interval of 1.
2) With a scatter plot, you cannot have your original labels retained on the X axis and, in your case, as your dates are recognised , they are ordered as such. You would need to convert the dates to text and plot as a line chart without the line.
Solution:
1) Right click X axis and set the major interval to a balance between the amount of detail you want to see and that which is legible. To see all data points, with data that are whole numbers, then 1 should do it, but may become very crowded, so a trade-off.
2) To stop the re-ordering of your dates: The trick is to convert your dates to text using =TEXT(A2,"dd/mm/yy") where A2 is a data point for the X axis etc. In the picture below, this is showing above B39, as I have transposed your original dataset, but the formula was pointing at your original vertical dataset. If that makes sense.
You arrange your data horizontally with each data point in its own column (i.e. transpose your original data set) and then plot this as a line chart and right click format data series > no line. Making sure markers are visible.
On an old Mac with Excel 2011, similar process for Windows and later Excel, removing the line would look like:
And you can select a line colour and add it back in:
Reference i gave in comments which reminded me to transpose the data is scatter-chart-with-one-text-non-numerical-axis
To be honest, if you are going to plot a line chart which has one axis which appears to be dates, it may confuse users if those dates are not then in order.
I recommend to convert all values to date and graph away with standard scatter plot...if you treat the dates as text, and then graph only the entries, then the variance between the dates can be very misleading (unless there are no gaps, 100% consistent).
Below is a snippit of text and of dates with your provided data. It is nearly identical, but not quite. If your data set is larger and there is larger variation between date entries then it will definitely provide a misleading chart.
If you go with the text path, change to line chart, hide line, set color to markers, and put the max interval to 1.
If you go with the date path, then you will not be able to read the x-axis with each date explicitly stated. There would be too many dates to display. You could add data labels to display in the plot area instead of the x-axis, but it is clutter.
You have stumbled across what many also find, that Excel stinks as a graphing tool. This is because about 10 years ago, Micro Soft went stupid and started trying to make software that is "really helpful for the user" translate "makes stupid decisions we don't want". One case in point is your problem.
Excel Line charts are not line charts; they are bar charts that just use lines instead of bars. The issue at hand is how different chart types treat the X-Axis. How you treat the X-Axis determines what kind of chart you use. There are basically only two kinds of X-Axis: discreet/continuous (aka. category/value). For example category would be something like color (RED/BLUE/GREEN). There is no "distance between colors" (what is the distance between red and blue?). Where as numbers and time have a concept of distance inherent in them. For example: how many days are there between jan-1-2001 and jan-10-2001? or What is the distance from the 10 yard line and the 20 yard line?
The problem is that to use charts in Excel, you have to know how each chart type treats the X-Axis. Most people would expect the LINE chart to treat the X-Axis as a value, but MS is not most people so they decided to treat it like a category (unless it is a date more on that in a moment). So, you cannot plot a number X-Axis on a line chart. You should use the XY SCATTER chart instead. Scatter chart in Excel assumes both axis are numbers and thus plots your numeric X-Axis in the expected manner.
if you use a line chart (or bar chart) and you double click your x-axis values, or right click them, you can go to their format axis page where you will see that you have the choice of treating the x-axis as text or dates, but not numbers. This is why when you sort your data differently in a line chart or bar chart, the chart changes, it is because the x-axis is being treated as a category and categories are plotted on the chart in the order they are seen in the data. This can be very useful when your x-axis really is a category but then if that were so you would most likely be using bar charts not line charts. My experience is that BAR charts and LINE charts in Excel behave exactly the same so consider that when thinking about using a line chart.
if your x-axis is a category use bar chart or pivot table and exploit sorting.
if your x-axis is a date use bar/line chart and mark it as date in format-axis page.
if your x-axis is a number use scatter chart.
if your data is something else, or you have a specific perspective you want to emphasize, then do some reading about the different chart types in Excel and pick the one that was created to show what you want to show.
I want to plot the sales on specific dates. But of course there hasn't been sales on some weekends and holidays, so i dont want to plot these days. Just skip these days in the graph. But as soon as i create a bar chart in excel and select the data points, excel automatically put the other dates in without data. How can i force excel to show only the data points i provide?
I attached to data point and the graph which excel creates.
http://imgur.com/a/RzN1l
http://imgur.com/a/Tx6dm
In the colum (or row) of data representing your dates, ensure they are string literals and not date values. You can do this by prepending a single-quote, e.g.:
'14/04/2017
Strictly speaking, you only need to do this to the first date.
easiest way is to format the x axis with the following option: Axis Type: Text Axis
I'm trying to create what I would call a Vertical stacked scatter plot or a scatte plot with a 2 dimensional x-axis. I tried using excel's normal charting tools as well as its pivot charting functionality, but I have not been able to crack this one. As anyone had any luck with this type of a chart or can you recommend a tool that can handle it. I've included an image of what I'm trying to achieve below:
The Y axis has months, and the X axis is a combination of Year and Units.
Thanks in advance for your input.
This can be easily handled in Tableau, if you and your users have access to it. For example, using sample Excel data with this format:
Date Units
1/1/2014 10
2/1/2014 20
3/1/2014 30
4/1/2014 40
...
You can create the scatter plot you've shown in your mock-up by doing the following:
Drag Date to Rows and change it to Month level
Drag Date to Columns and leave it at Year level
Drag Units to Columns
Change the Marks type to Circle
Reduce the size of the circles so they look like points
Sort Month according to your preference
Here's a link to a screenshot of the set-up and resulting plot:
screenshot of scatter plot
There are also many formatting options to change the look of the plot.
When I'm making a line chart in Spotfire to get the trend, it automatically sorts my x-axis labels. Is there any way in which I get the same order of the labels as in my data file ?? (Labels are time periods, in MMMYYYY format)
When you create a line chart with a date as the category axis, it only makes sense for the category axis to be sorted by date. Otherwise, the chart would essentially be a scatter chart. One way to group this is to use BinBy<...> function or apply another category on top of your date column so that it segments it.