[Solved] Chart: dates on the X-axis evenly distributed

[thany]

I'm having trouble getting dates on the X-axis and having them distribute according to their value. This is not especially specific to dates, but in my case it's about dates. They could be numbers just as well.

Here's what I've got:
24-05-2011 | 30
25-05-2011 | 40
29-05-2011 | 50
30-05-2011 | 60
25-06-2011 | 70

Normally, data like this in a line chart shows a perfectly straight line, but if you look at the dates, the line shouldn't be straight. There's a big gap between the last two dates, which in a line chart should produce a line that's almost horizontal, compared to the other lines.

Basically what I want to see is a graph that shows numbers spread over a whole year, with a number *not* on every day of the year. Still the graph should be plotted of the coarse of a year, not over the coarse of 50 separate days. Having to include days that do not have such a number would be mildly undesirable, but still ok if there's no other way. But even if I include the days between, they'd show up as 0 on the line graph, which is not what I want.

So how do I visualize this kind of data in a line graph neatly and proportionally?

[ken johnson]

You should be using the X-Y (Scatter) type of chart.

Ken Johnson

[thany]

Brilliant, thanks

At first I didn't understand how the settings would influence the graph, but I just fiddled with em and it works quite nicely.

[jrkrideau]

Brilliant, thanks

At first I didn't understand how the settings would influence the graph, but I just fiddled with em and it works quite nicely.

In relatively simple terms, a line chart is just a different version of a bar chart. It assumes that the x-axis is categorical variable : that is 1,2,3,4 is the same as A, B, C, D. just equally spaced labels.

In an x-y graph the numbers on the x-axis are really numbers, not equally spaced labels.