Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with chart

How to transform daily emailed data into a web–accessible chart?

borborygmi — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:47:31 -0800

I get reports emails every morning with simple, TSV data in the message body - and am trying to do something pretty with them, automatically. I'd like to forward these emails ... somewhere... and have them transformed into charts that are viewable on a password-protected site, or something like Panic's Status Board app.

Are there any tools that can help me get this job done? The simpler, and cheaper, the better. I looked at sites like StaHat.com but still felt like I was missing a few steps.

I don't have access to BusinessObjects or CrystalReports. but I do have FTP access to a server and some coding skills in HTML, C and python. Also pretty good with excel, if that helps.

Where can I find a detailed poster explaining geological periods?

Jimbob — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:38:17 -0800

I'm trying to brush up on my geology, a science that pretty much passed me by, which is frustrating when people I work with casually start talking about Cambrian this, and Triassic that. Where can I find a large poster / chart detailing all the geological epochs and periods? The chart produced by the Geological Society of America is a good start, but it would be more useful if it was, say, annotated with important events ("Angiosperms evolved here! Gondwana separated here!"), and it it had maps of the positions of continents on it at various times. Has anyone seen anything like this? My searches for geology posters have mostly turned up pictures of mountains, or "Geology Rocks!" logos...

Chart help needed: How to show proportion between two values?

Sock Ray Blue — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 06:48:41 -0800

What type of chart do I want to show that one number is several times as many as another? Putting a tall bar representing value x next to short bar representing value y shows that x is greater than y by x-y. (I realize that's a bit of an oversimplification.) What's the best way to show that x is greater than y by x/y times? I would love some examples.

Bonus question that I should really know the answer to: if x-y is the "linear" relationship, what is x/y? Neither the "geometric" relationship nor the "proportional" relationship sound right to me.

# of recording artists per given area

dunkadunc — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:21:00 -0800

I'm making a chart showing the number of musicians/recording artists per capita in different countries and US states. What I need is a dataset with the number of musicians in each area. Clearly, this isn't totally easy because not all jurisdictions require musicians to register with the government, but I would be OK with slightly nonscientific data instead.

I tried to pull the information off last.fm, but the site only shows how many users used a tag, and how many times it has been used. If I could find out how many artists on last.fm have been tagged as "hungarian", that would be good. Population data I can find myself.

I'm aware of the Million Song Dataset, but I'm not a coder and don't think I could wrangle the Python code to get what I want (and besides, would rather not download a 200+GB file!)

Turning user input into pie (charts)

antonymous — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 08:59:21 -0800

WordPressFilter: I'm looking for a plugin/widget/codesnippet that will allow me to create a graph using input from the user. This seems really simple and I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but my Google-fu is taking the day off. Basically, I want the user to put numbers into one or more fields, then we apply our mathemagic formula to those numbers, then we give them a graph with the results. I tried looking along the lines of mortgage calculators, but no dice there either.

I'd prefer to find a plugin for WordPress that will handle this, but I'm also amenable (to a lesser degree) to hacking together some solution in HTML5/js if that's a viable alternative. Gentle nudges in the right direction there would be helpful too, as my skills have atrophied a wee bit...

Ideal ranges in excel charts?

xyzzy — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 23:13:23 -0800

Displaying ideal ranges in the plot area of an Excel 2007 chart. Possible? Say I have a table in a worksheet that tracks temperature data. The table is like this:

Day | Temp (F)

Day is plotted on X, of course, and temp on Y.

I'd like to create a chart that has two components: an actual line showing daily recorded temperatures, and a filled in area behind that line that displays an ideal temperature range.

I know I can do conditional formatting in the table itself, but I'd really like the ideal range to be displayed handily in the plot area of a chart. I assumed I could do this using a secondary axis, but I'm rather stumped as to how this might be accomplished. It seems like this would be a common thing people would like to do, but no amount of googling has revealed a method to accomplish this.

If Excel 2007 can't do this, is there another spreadsheet program (preferably free) that can do this? Can Excel 2010 do this? Or is there something I could export the CSV data into that would allow this type of visualization? Preferably without needing to write code. I can write code. I don't want to.

Thanks.

Pie chart in Word with dollar amounts?

zardoz — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:28:40 -0800

How to make a pie chart in Word with dollar amounts, not percentages? I am trying to make a pie chart in Word 2011 but cannot figure out how to make it display dollar amounts instead of percentages.

I enter the info in Excel, which puts the info back into Word. I have five or six slices of pie and the dollar amounts, but the pie chart doesn't reflect these. Is it possible? Does the dollar sign interfere with the Excel formula?

Please help!

rank & file

luriete — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 15:37:17 -0800

I am looking for a chart/infographic illustrating both the hierarchy, in the entire defense department (that is, throughout all wings of the military) of the different NCO/CO ranks as well as the warrant officer ranks. Has anyone seen anything like this? My Google-fu is weak.

Charting Seas of Data

JoeXIII007 — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:45:41 -0800

What examples are out there on the web of interactive charts with thousands of data points that can be scrolled through smoothly with little interruption or skipping? So I have this project which is almost done, with a handful of charts that collectively render thousands of data points (5K-10K+).

One problem which has been handled in an OK way is that the vast amount of data slow down the app when a user wants to scroll to a certain point. The current work around is for the user to manipulate a slider first, and when they're done, the app reconfigures the charts to align with the slider state. Ideally we would have users manipulate the slider and the chart would change in real time with the changes. But this gets painfully slow due to the circumstances.

My team has looked at WeatherSpark for inspiration, but it is incredibly difficult to figure out what they have done, even after a little bit of email and phone correspondence with the creators.

Thus I ask if there are other examples of web applications out there that do something similar to Weatherspark: display thousands of data points and allow users to smoothly navigate through them. This is to see if I can get some new ideas of different approaches to the problem.

Web app packages that achieve this would be a plus (if they exist).

Additionally, detailed explanations as to why this continues to be a challenge, if it is still a challenge, for regular web development (i.e. not Weatherspark) would be awesome.

Thank you!

PS: I am aware that cutting down on the data to be displayed, or figuring out a way to compactly summarize the data, would solve this problem to some degree.

Open Office Problems

to recite so charmingly — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:41:36 -0800

I'm using Open Office Impress for a powerpoint, and I accidentally clicked on a chart icon. How do I get back to my presentation? Hi, so, I really never even wanted to create a chart, but now I cannot even find a way back to where I was before clicking the stupid icon. All my options are chart related. Ctrl-Z only takes me to the start of this chart mess. Please help!

How do I make a dartboard-type chart for the web?

snapped — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:34:45 -0800

I made an awesome dartboard-type chart in Excel, but now I'm trying to put it on the web. Help!! I used a radar chart in Excel to create a dartboard. The dartboard displays an employee's score in each of 7 categories. They can achieve one of four scores, so there is a bullseye, an inner ring, an outer ring, and then an area outside the dartboard. When opened in Excel, there's a single unlocked cell where the employee number is input, and the chart updates when the user hits Enter. There are seven "sections" of the dartboard, and so Excel plots each dart at its proper place from bullseye to outside.

It looks great in Excel but I want something that can be done in a browser without any fancy plug-ins, just an up-to-date browser (IE, Chrome, or Firefox). I realize they may not all use the same standards currently, and Chrome has some abilities the others may not, but ideally I'd want this to work in IE.

I'm thinking that if I could just have an image of a dartboard as the background, then overlay some "darts" (either text or an image) plotted along an X & Y, I could do this. I do not know if this is actually possible. The data entry part could be freeform or dropdown box, it really doesn't matter.

Other things to know:
-I'm not a web programmer but can learn
-I'm not the administrator of the final location of this project, so I'd need to be able to create it and then hand it off to someone else as a self-contained unit
-I'm open to other solutions, but I'd prefer no flash or other plug-ins/tech since I cannot be sure that the end users will have the know-how to install anything or update anything

Feel free to tell me "no f-ing way" or "here's my contact info and I'll do it for $X", but I'd really like to figure out a way to generate this myself and learn something along the way. This is not part of something I'm being paid to do, but it is something I'd like to show to my bosses later as a "hey look at this neat thing I was able to create..." kind of project.

Drawing small graphics in Windows

shothotbot — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:35:58 -0800

What do you use to make quick little drawings in Windows? I love OneNote for taking notes, in and out of class, but I have to make a lot of charts (think an axis with a few lines, nothing precise).

The built in graphics in OneNote is miserable. Much worse than Word for example. Much. It would be nice to have a small, free, simple program I could use to make little graphics and then copy and paste those to my heart's content.

Speed limit: 1 minute per hour

brenton — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:14:56 -0800

Where can I find a map that shows driving distance instead of just physical distance? It would probably be too hard to redraw a map where 1 inch = 1 minute, due to the havoc caused by freeways and slower roads.

But I'm hoping to find something like Google maps where you put an address and it draws concentric circles of driving time around that address, or better yet, colors the entire map along a spectrum based on driving time, e.g. blue is really close and it shifts to green, orange and then red, being the farthest.

Or maybe there's a painless way to calculate this for myself?

Line graph of a range of possible rates?

BleachBypass — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:19:02 -0800

Is there an accepted way to graphically represent rates when small sample data is anonymized? I have a data set where a large number of points are "less than ten but greater than one incidents."

I would like to graph this data and I am wondering if there is an standard way to show this sort of anonymized data on a graph.

If this were a population of 100, the rate would be within 1%-10%. On my format (excel, horizontal line chart), I am perhaps picturing a wide line representing the possible min and max range, similar to the Minard's famous Napoleon illustration (except the thickness of the line wouldn't represent the number of soldiers, but rather the possible range of values.

Or perhaps another way to phrase this - one that may betray my ignorance of statistics, but - what would it look like if a line graph and a box-and-whiskers graph had a baby?

Can't find a webpage about forming new habits

mismatched — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:23:13 -0800

Can you help me find a particular webpage about developing new habits? Some time in the past few months, I found a website that divided up goals or lifestyle changes into how they were achieved. It was organized in the form of a table.

I think the columns of the table were things like doing something once, doing something multiple times/consistently, not doing something once, and avoiding something consistently. I think these were correlated with colors -- I'm fairly certain one was purple and another was blue. The rows may have been divided on tiers of difficulty, but I'm not sure.

FWIW, the background of the page is gray.

I've tried googling various permutations of the above, but I bet some of you have stronger google-fu than I do. Your help would be much appreciated. Also, though this is posted in the health and fitness category, the page was not focused on those topics -- it was much more general.

Free Infographic Software

cascando — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:58:05 -0800

I am looking for the best free software to make interesting and compelling infographics. Venn diagrams, word clouds, bar charts- hopefully a couple of options in order to make good looking infographics. Any recommendations or advice is welcome.

Down Far South

PinkMoose — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:17:03 -0800

I know that there is a big country scene in Australia, and I know some of the artists (Kasey Chambers, et. al) but I don't know the details really. Is there a good book or a good blog or a list of artists or songs i need to hear now that explains country music in Australia and New Zealand? Both Alt and Chart.

Tufte, you need to give me a little bit more...

teragram — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:49:10 -0800

How should I display this data? Chlamydia screening rates among 20 clinics, cut a few different ways. Big picture question: resources for really good charts and graphs? Yes, I went to a Tufte class today.

So it got me thinking: how can I best visualize this data? I am looking at chlamydia screening of sexually active young women: twenty clinics, patients split between internal medicine and pediatrics PCPs, and patients included either by having a hormonal birth control prescription or some other reason. I want to get my audience discussing the variation and thinking about ways to improve.

I know I could do this with a bunch of different displays (a graph comparing the rates of the different clinics, a page comparing the clinics pediatrics only, etc etc) but I wonder if there is something more clever.

Big picture, any books or resources for excellent charts and graphs? I have the Tufte books right here, but I want more examples. Bonus points if they display healthcare data. Even suggestions on terms to search on Google Images would be much appreciated.

Looking for website or tool to create and manage mini contests.

rdurbin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:53:55 -0800

I am working turn my life into a game/competition. I have larger goals (like weight loss) that I am breaking down into shorter goals. Then to make these goals more fun, I am turning each goal into a competition. Do you know of a way to create these goals as a contest online with data entry and a mini chart? Right now my wife and I are an a weight loss contest. Each week we weigh in on Sunday night. The person that wins (by losing the most the previous week) gets a small prize (20 doughnuts - I joke!).

I just recently used Fafarazzi to run an online celebrity game/draft. That was really fun and super addicting. I was hoping to there would be a way to run our contests online so they have more of teh fun time super value.

Weight loss is just an example application. I would prefer a tool/site that isn't specific to weight loss. I feel like the needs are generic enough that hopefully there is a tool out there that would handle any simple contest/goal.

Do you know of any online tool/charting application that has the following features:

1. A chart that shows current info (in this case weight) of all contest participants.
2. Support data entry as well as charting. Most that I have found don't do both.
3. Support for multiple users. This way everyone can enter in their own progress.

Nice to have:
1. include a reminder email if someone hasn't keyed in their data
2. show basic stats - days remaining in contest, etc.
3. a snippit of code you could use to embed your progress chart in another webpage
4. profile page - show goal & current weight & amount left to lose (maybe even expected completion date?)
5. Enter in a start and end date for the contest.
6. Display a winner! whenever the contest ends
7. a way to mock the person losing :)

Microsoft Acess Charts dead-end.

Jimbob — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 01:04:18 -0800

Microsoft Access 2007 - how on earth do I cut / copy / export / do anything with my Pivot Chart, besides print it? I've been putting together an Access database for my wife's work - I have extensive experience with RDMS and SQL, so I figured I could wrangle Access 2007 into shape and make it produce some reports and charts on demand. I've got it all working beautifully, except that I've generated a Pivot Chart for a query, there appears to be no way to get it into any other piece of software. There's no way to copy/paste it. All the export options (export to Word, export to Excel etc.) end up giving producing the output of the query, not the chart.

Surely there's a way to do this besides print-screen/paste, which wouldn't really satisfy the people this is intended for. If anyone has any creative solutions, I would be most thankful.

looking for a log of captain cooks voyages in the form of gps coordinates(log/lat)

yosh — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:21:21 -0800

i am looking for a log of captain cooks voyages in the form of GPS coordinates(log/lat) or similar. like this google user generated map, but with higher resolution if possible.

Is there a cartographic term for this?

rahnefan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:25:19 -0800

Is there a cartographic term for this? On old nautical charts, there are often (bearing?) lines all over the place, which intersect to form a sort of star-shape. See this image please: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mediterranean_chart_fourteenth_century2.jpg Is there a name for the star-shaped convergence? Is their placement arbitrary? It looks arbitrary. Did the cartographer simply place them at intervals around a point of interest or a coastline, like numbers on a clock face?

Tried Google, tried Wikipedia, tried some cool cartographic sites...no luck.

A graph for all to see.

ricochet biscuit — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:42:20 -0800

How do I get an Excel-generated chart onto Facebook? Is there a way to take a chart generated in Excel and transform it directly into an image which one could post (as a photo, I suppose) on Facebook?

Futzing about with the Print Screen function and Adobe PhotoDeluxe (no, no Photoshop, alas) have not got me anywhere. I suppose I could print the thing, scan it and post that image, but there must be a more elegant way.

Looking for a Fun/Interesting "Chart/Table of Distances"

lyam — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:29:52 -0800

I'm looking for a fun chart/table of distances (Heights, Lengths) to incorporate into a walking for wellness program. I am converting steps taken to approximate miles and would like to present interesting facts such as "You've walked 5000 steps! That's the equivalent of walking from 'x' city/landmark to 'y' city/landmark.", or "climbing 'x' monument 'y' time over!".

I know I could laboriously collect this info by googling various distances/monuments, etc... but I was hoping there was already one in existence somewhere that I could borrow from.

Thanks in advance.

Can you help me find a particular Javascript charting library website?

chocolate_butch — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:25:22 -0800

Can you help me find a website about a charting library that I saw recently? I'll be darned if I can find this particular web based charting library, that I believe was javascript based. Here is what I can recall about the website:

- I visited the site in the last 90 days.

it was unlike any other charting site that I had seen before.

- There was a 3-d animated chart on the starting page that resembled the ripples in the surface of water after a droplet hit it.

- each page in the site had large explanatory text on primary color background. pages were rather spare content-wise.

- the site presented the information more like a series of slides that demonstrated the capabilities of the library. Like a ppt slide deck.

- the charting feature may have been part of a larger "ajax" library.

- 3d charts could be animated to spin around like Matrix "bullet-time". IIRC zoom in/out may have also been possible.

- I may have found it either via the blue, reddit or delicious.com/popular . A search through my history is turning up nothing, I think I was on a different computer.

- I recall seeing x-y charts, x-y-z charts, and pie and exploded-pie charts.

Does that ring a bell with anyone?