Comments on: Numbers Graphing Question http://nslog.com/2007/12/28/numbers_graphing_question The Weblog of Erik J. Barzeski Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:19:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Matt Sayler http://nslog.com/2007/12/28/numbers_graphing_question#comment-45083 Matt Sayler Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:22:00 +0000 http://nslog.com/2007/12/28/numbers_graphing_question#comment-45083 "Simple question: is there any way for Numbers to display this data with the data spread out accordingly? The dates and times aren't evenly spaced, but I'd like them to be." Do you mean that you want the X axis to represent time, with a point (or set of points) that represents that data? In general, Excel/NeoOffice (I don't have Numbers, sorry) only let you do this if you can formulate the X axis as a number and then run a scatter plot. In this case a date/time is a special case of "number. For Excel/Windows, I the format that seems to work is "11/30 16:20" for the date/time column. If you then create a scatter plot, your X axis will be sized appropriately. In general, all the spreadsheet software I've seen *really* bites for doing time-series data. Sadly, I don't have a really great solution for this when the data involves actual dates/times (as opposed to, say, seconds from start). Plot (http://plot.micw.eu/) is keen but doesn't handle date/time format for imports. Gnuplot is sort of a PITA to use. "Simple question: is there any way for Numbers to display this data with the data spread out accordingly? The dates and times aren't evenly spaced, but I'd like them to be."

Do you mean that you want the X axis to represent time, with a point (or set of points) that represents that data?

In general, Excel/NeoOffice (I don't have Numbers, sorry) only let you do this if you can formulate the X axis as a number and then run a scatter plot. In this case a date/time is a special case of "number.

For Excel/Windows, I the format that seems to work is "11/30 16:20" for the date/time column. If you then create a scatter plot, your X axis will be sized appropriately.

In general, all the spreadsheet software I've seen *really* bites for doing time-series data. Sadly, I don't have a really great solution for this when the data involves actual dates/times (as opposed to, say, seconds from start). Plot (http://plot.micw.eu/) is keen but doesn't handle date/time format for imports. Gnuplot is sort of a PITA to use.

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