Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with chart

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?

I lost my chart!

aburd — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:00:09 -0800

I used to have a really nice chart showing the growth of the US GDP from the early 1800s through now. I think it was a Fed chart with the recession eras shaded. Can anyone help me find this?

Rates of success?

rollick — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:46:36 -0800

Statistics question: is it possible to test sets of cumulative data for significant differences in rate? I have three cumulative percentage graphs, measuring the germination rates of three different seed types. Is there a way to compare them and see if there are any statistically significant differences?

The seed types were planted in triplicate, on three dishes each (nine overall). Every day for the past few weeks I've observed how many seeds on each dish have begun germinating -- so for an individual dish I would have " Day 1: 0 ... Day 7: 14 ... Day 14: 29" etc, with each day's score a cumulative total. (There are 100 seeds on each dish, so it works as a percentage rate as well)

In Excel, I've graphed the average germination rates of the replicates, for a graph that resembles this one. (with three lines plotted, and x-axis = time in days, y-axis = percent germinated).

So is there a way to compare these different rates statistically? I can use Excel, Minitab, SPSS, and R.

Grapher: How do I animate a parameter?

b1tr0t — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:33:28 -0800

How do you animate a parameter in the OSX Grapher utility? There is an example called "Variable Parameter" that has a time line where T varies from 0 to 10. When you move the slider, the graphs are redrawn accordingly.

I'd like to do something similar, with different equations. But I can't seem to animate any parameters. I can create a system of equations with discrete steps (using curly brace notation) or do a parametric equation that varies continuously, but none allow me to animate a parameter.

Simple example:
I'd like to create an animation for y=sin(x+t) or even y=t*sin(x). How do I do that?

Put me on a continuum

Clyde Mnestra — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:50:28 -0800

What free software (or adroit use of SmartDraw or basic MS Office products) provides a template for making pretty continuum figures/charts for inclusion in a Word document? I would like to produce something that is at its core like this, but allowing me to (a) introduce stacking (that is, easily superimpose another X axis on top, or various vectors), and (b) introduce a little more glam (e.g., like this).

I know that I could generate something crude by freedrawing. I also know that in Excel or SmartDraw I could generate a timeline, which looks approximately right but is miserable to work with if the basic values on the X axis are not chronological data -- as they are not. I have to believe there is something out there with a friendly, free, elegant template!

If it helps, this is for a formal set of figures in a social science paper, in which the continuum illustrates degrees of restraint on the latitude of various actors -- with successive figures illustrating additional constraints by stacking or superimposing them on the X axis. I have Word 2002.

Thanks!

Please help me find some linguistics posters!

iamkimiam — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:37:07 -0800

Looking to purchase some awesome linguistics-related posters. I've searched for hours on the internet and I can't seem to find any family tree posters, IPA posters, or even anything remotely related to linguistics that is interesting and somewhat academic. It would be cake to find something like the "History of Programming Languages" poster, but for Indo-European languages or some other branch of the world tree. I'm tempted to just make a language tree poster myself, but that'd be a LOT of work.

Also, any ideas to spruce up a giant bulletin board and/or small linguistics 'lab' room are welcome.

College Radio Singles Chart

hayeled — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:44:11 -0800

Is there an American College Radio singles chart? Not necessarily singles, but individual tracks that are receiving the most airplay. There was this, but it seems long since abandoned.

To date, all I can find are Album charts.

Software for making clever information visualizations?

anthill — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:17:13 -0800

How to make clever visualizations from Excel or CSV data? Any free, flexible information-graphic scripting software out there? I'd like to make a stream graph or an emergent dot graph (like this one) using some time-stamped, categorical spreadsheet data.

Any recommendations for a graphing toolkit that can generate info graphics from CSVs?

Turning data into images/graphs dynamically

kenzi23 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:50:15 -0800

I want to propose to my manager a system/software/configuration to dynamically graph data but I don't know what the technical terms are or what software can do this kind of thing. I need your advice. I am looking for the generic name (or specific software if you have recommendations) for software that can take data from a database (in this case Lotus Notes) and dynamically create charts. More details: we have a database that tracks people, the work they are doing, in/out time, due time, who it's for, where the work is currently located, etc. I want to be able to graphically represent the whole or parts of the data in various ways, gannt charts, maps etc. Ideally there would be certain standard charts that one could click on to get a certain type of overview of the data, but I would also like something where a user can create their own chart from the data. These charts would need to appear with the most up-to-date data.

I don't know what this software is called so I am not successful in googling it. I am looking for search terms. Also, if there is anything specific out there that you know of that can work with a Lotus Notes database that would be good too.

I'm not in IT but I work with technology; I would not be designing the system, just giving a mock-up and proposal. The users of it would be managers/supervisors, also not IT people.

Looking for a compact Chinese character frequency chart with English pronunciation key for Cantonese.

querty — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:19:58 -0800

Looking for a compact Chinese character frequency chart with English pronunciation key for Cantonese. Just watched Tim Ferriss's presentation here: http://fora.tv/2008/12/12/Feel_Like_the_Incredible_Hulk_with_Tim_Ferriss.

He mentions that he used a most frequently used character chart while learning Japanese. The chart was fairly compact and was useful for traveling. I'm looking for something similar for Chinese but also needs English pronunciation key for Cantonese. Is there something like this I can buy/download? I've found most frequently used Chinese characters lists but they're in CSV files and don't have pronunciation keys or they're in Mandarin.

On top of spaghetti , All covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, When somebody sneezed.

MiltonRandKalman — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:44:26 -0800

Looking for a easy to follow chart for pairing of pasta sauces and types/shapes of pasta (preferably a visual guide). Most of the ones of finding are too general and pasta shapes are usually created with a particular sauce in mind.

Charting little squares

TrashyRambo — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:02:06 -0800

What's the best way to produce a graph like this in Excel? (Or should I be using a different graphing package?)

Flattening vintage chart

Zebtron — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:35:15 -0800

I have a large vintage (1920s era) anatomical chart hanging in my bedroom. The edges have been gradually curling under. Anybody have ideas how to flatten it without doing any damage?

Excel Filter: How to make these bars wider?

squorch — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:00:06 -0800

How can I make the X units of an excel chart weeks instead of days? I've got some data that is tabulated weekly and then put on a chart for higher-up consumption. The data is in the form of flight hours per week, with week as the X axis and flight hours on the Y. The difficulty arises when Excel plots the data with "days" as the units. Selectable options are days, months and years for the X-axis units. Is there a way that I can trick Excel into plotting the data with weeks as the X-axis? My boss's boss really wants the graph to not have such skinny bars.

MapFilter

bad grammar — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:13:10 -0800

Where can I find a freeware or shareware download for Mac OS X that will allow me to plug in numerical data (e.g., public library funding in a given year) for each U.S. State and get a map of the USA that displays color-coded states? Like the infamous red / blue states map, which also has county breakdowns. I've tried EuroOffice's Map Chart extension with OpenOffice for Mac and ran into the Python-related bug they warn about; EuroOffice does not come in Mac OS X. Most of the other apps I can find either come in Windows only (such as Microsoft MapPoint), are hideously expensive, or both. I am not looking for 3-D visualization or GIS, just for a way to create a 2-D map that represents numerical data by U.S. state (and county would be nice as well).
I currently am using Mac OS X 10.4.11.
I am willing to pay up to $50 but $25 or less would be preferable.

Can I make an Excel chart from only one column?

niles — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:06:28 -0800

How can I create a chart in Excel 2007 showing the number of times a certain value occurs in a column? This seems like it should be really simple, but I can't for the life of me figure this out.
I have an excel spreadsheet with about 150 rows of marketing data that I'd like be able to chart, but with only a single column of data per chart. Maybe this is possible with Pivot Tables? I can't figure that out.

Here's an example: Column H has the cities everyone lives in. I want a chart showing how many people live in a given city. I could obviously count this out by hand ("Ok, that's 5 for San Diego.."), but I can't help but think Excel should be able to do the heavy lifting for me. I'm fine using macros/VBA, but this seems so simple! Famous last words, I know.

Let me know if I need to clarify this.

Timeline Charts on Steroids

Inkoate — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:33:29 -0800

I am tasked with preparing a multi-category, filterable timeline as a work project. I think Access is probably the best way to do this, but I need some help with the mechanics, or suggestions on where to find a template. The final product will look similar to a gantt chart, with the primary difference being that milestones need to be shown as text, not progress bars. The top horizontal axis needs to display dates, the left vertical axis needs to display 5 different categories of milestones (for example, "events" are in the top section, "deliverables" in the second section, etc). I have over a hundred milestones (all associated with a date) to display.

If it were only this requirement, I would just build it by hand in Excel or Powerpoint or something. However, the timeline needs to be filterable by another set of categories (not the same as the ones on the left vertical axis), so that I can tailor the end product to different audiences--this ability to filter on a third set of variables makes me think a database approach is going to be easier than just using Excel.

Does anyone know if someone has done this sort of thing in Access before? Is there a template somewhere that I can rip off? Failing that, does anyone have any advice regarding the sort of structure that might make sense to represent this data, if I have to build this from the ground up?

Excel Sums with Multiple Criteria

Frank Grimes — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:18:41 -0800

Help me recreate these charts in Excel I am trying to recreate these charts in Excel. I have all of the data, but I want to manipulate it and create similar charts.

I cannot come up with the appropriate SUMIF or DSUM formulas that allow me to do this. Basically, I need a formula that says:
1) Pick a type of ship
2) Was the ship in service in the year in question?
3) Sum the gross tonnage of all ships that meet these criteria.

The hang up is the requirement of absolute references in the SUMIF and DSUM formulas (i.e. "Year=1990). I need a formula that I can drag across multiple years.

Switching axis in Excel 2003

Rustbeard — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:29:54 -0800

I'm using Microsoft Excel 2003 at work and I need to make a chart where the category (x) axis is the y axis; is there any way of doing this? I've been trying to figure out a way to make this work this morning and can't seem to get it to work. I have tried puting the actual values in the category section and the category in the values section but it does not work out that way. Or is there even just a way i can turn the chart around?
I'm using a line chart by the way.
This is for a science paper and I need to show percent %organic matter (thats the values) through depth (category) so it would be nice to have depth on the y axis going down and then the values plotted showing how it progress further down. This makes it a lot easier to understand then what I have currently which is displayed left to right.

StupidExcelQuestionFilter: Adding x and y axis labels

peacheater — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:59:36 -0800

How do I add x and y axis labels to a chart in Excel 2008 for Macs? I've been trying to do this for about an hour and am just about ready to tear my hair out. The whole thing should be ridiculously simple but I'm just not seeing it. So I have two columns of data which I want to plot against each other. So I did that. Now I want to add an x axis label and a y axis label (e.g. 'Voltage' and 'Time'). I just can't figure out how to do it. No matter where I click on the chart the box for adding these labels doesn't open up. There doesn't seem to be any way to do this from the menus on top either. I'm sure I'm just missing something obvious, so would really appreciate it if you could help me out.

How can I get all my research into one easy-to-use visual chart?

omnigut — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:54:46 -0800

What is the best application (hopefully easy to learn) that will let me build an easy to create timeline of religions, myths, and cults, with the option to click on (or hover the mouse over) different highlighted words to show up more information? Or does anyone know where said timeline exists? In the next fifteen weeks I have to research and write the first fifty pages of a novel, which I am basing on the idea of "belief." This will be in several different areas, but especially on spiritual belief, and as I have a lot of time on my hands (who needs sleep?) and I am a research junkie with a terrible memory, I would like to create an easy-reference guide to the plethora of beliefs that I will be referencing.

I have a huge number of links already for data, so gathering the information is not a problem. However, within each type of belief I would like to chart the date it started (earliest at the top), and the type of belief (a different color for myths, religions, and cults). However, once I have each one there, I would like to be able to easily see information such as "current supporters," "concerned with current actions or the afterlife," "monotheistic or polytheistic," and several other criteria, including a paragraph or three about the interesting, unique aspects of said religion, cult, or myth.

My problem is I don't want it to be too huge, so I would like the information about each thing only to be shown when you hover the mouse over them, or click on them.

Eventually, although this isn't vital at the moment, I would also like to have the option to click on "myth" or "monotheistic" or "suicidal," or whatever the criteria, and have a list of all the groups that are within this criteria.

Does anyone know of an application that will allow me to do this? I am using, by the way, a Mac OSX (10.4.11), and know how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, and inDesign, as well as Word, Excel (slight), and almost no knowledge of powerpoint.

Otherwise, does anyone know where I can find the information that I am looking for, either in a text book or on cd? Thank you!

Nick

Making Complex Connection Webs

divabat — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:51:46 -0800

If I have the data "A is friends with B, B is dating C, C is cousin of A, D is old schoolmate of B" etc, how can I easily make a chart of everyone's connections to each other? This should preferably be software, as trying to map it out manually is way too timeconsuming and difficult.

Where can I find a media and planning chart for a sales promo?

survivorman — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:58:56 -0800

For an assignment in college, I need to cough up a sales promotion strategy for a bogus product, complete with a media and planning chart to outline timing and integration. Since the prof has not supplied any chart templates for the class, and I don't have all day to wait for her email reply, where on the internets might I find said chart to coordinate all these activities in a sane manner? Much of the heavy lifting (target audience, promotion activities etc) have already been done. I just need a chart media planners would use.

Names as data labels or markers in Excel 2007?

muhonnin — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:03:01 -0800

Excel 2007 charting: Can you tell me how to use the name of a point as the data marker or the data label in an X-Y scatter plot? I have about 75 - 80 points that I'd like to display in an X-Y scatterplot in Excel 2007. Each point has a name consisting of a letter and a number: point A1 is (3, 3), point A2 is (4,6), point B1 is (2,1), etc. My point names are in column A, my x values are in column B, and my y values are in column C. Ideally, instead of a lot of blue diamonds scattered across the chart, I'd like to be the markers to be the point names (A1, A2, etc.). If that's not possible, I'd settle for being able to use the point names as data labels next to the blue diamonds. The only options I seems to be able to access for the data label are the X value, the Y value, or the name of the whole series.

Apologies if I'm missing something obvious--an hour of exploring the help facility and Googling have not been very illuminating. I'd be happy to implement a simple VBA script or macro if that would help.

In search of free online tool for creating radial graphs!

cortex — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:47:20 -0800

Are there any free online tools for generating radar (aka radial, spider, star) graphs/charts? The ideal tool would be easy to use dynamically and/or against large sets of data to generate multiple graphs.

I know that Google Documents, for example, provides a lot of graph/chart options, but not this specific sort. On the other end, I'm solid with perl and aware of e.g. radial.pm, but I'd love to find a slick, existing start-to-finish tool rather than having to roll some or all of it myself.

Any ideas?