Creating a chart of some sort on PC - help please!

steelframedhouse

I need to create a chart, possibly in openoffice calc (free version of excel) as I already have this downloaded but would be happy to use any other (free!) program as recommended.

I'm not even sure how best to display the data but I basically want to show how often an event happens and at what time that event happens so up the left hand side I thought I would have all the hours in the day ie 07:00, 08:00, 09:00 etc and then along the bottom I would have the dates ie 14/01/14 the 'event' happened at 21:00 and 23:00 so thought I would have two columns on that day, on 15/01/14 the 'event' happened at 23:00 so just one column needed and then on 16/01/14 the 'event' happened at 03:00, 07:00, 10:00, 11:45 & 17:15 so would need five columns on that day. The chart needs to start on 14/01/14 and possibly run until 28/01/14 so have two weeks worth of data on it.

Is a bar chart the best way to display this data? If not what sort of chart would represent it best?

I have openoffice and have tried to create a chart but it was very confusing and seems to want to make the chart from data already input on another sheet whereas I just want to create one from scratch as it seems very complex to try and input the data into a sheet (not even sure how I would type that up on a new sheet to get it to display properly in a chart).

I'd be very grateful for any input, if there was a chart already in existence in excel or openoffice format that I could amend to suit my needs I'd be grateful to be pointed in the right direction.

I_have_spoken

seems to want to make the chart from data already input on another sheet whereas I just want to create one from scratch

Every spread sheet type program is designed to graph a grid of numbers.

Sounds like you need a drawing package where you can layout the design yourself like OpenOffice Impress.

Maybe you need a 'scatter graph', so to take your example the X axis is hour of day 0..23 and Y is date and each dot shows a recorded event

steelframedhouse

Thanks, just having a look at OpenOffice impress now

steelframedhouse

Impress looks more like what I need but I'm struggling to let it allow me to label the Y axis (the vertical one) as times, I can get it to display in the time format ie 00:00 but have only managed for all the times to be 00:00 or for it to start at 07:00 with the next value being 07:01 whereas I need it to start at 07:00 then go to 08:00 right the way through back to 06:00. Think I might resort to an old fashioned bit of paper and a pen!

WaywardDriver

To ask a statistical question - are the events on a particular day independent? i.e. if the event occurs at 03:00 say does this make it more or less likely or make no difference that the event will occur later on in the same day? If not then the events are independent and you could construct a chart with time of day on the horizontal axis and frequency of occurrence over the 14 days on the vertical axis.

steelframedhouse

WaywardDriver wrote: »

To ask a statistical question - are the events on a particular day independent? i.e. if the event occurs at 03:00 say does this make it more or less likely or make no difference that the event will occur later on in the same day? If not then the events are independent and you could construct a chart with time of day on the horizontal axis and frequency of occurrence over the 14 days on the vertical axis.

I'm not sure! The chart is to try and build up a picture of when my dog is having seizures - she's on anti-epileptic medication but has had a bit of a relapse so I was trying to create a chart/graph to build up a picture of when it's happening (seems to be mainly overnight/in the early hours of the morning) - my example has the times on the vertical axis and dates on the horizontal access so opposite to your suggestion - I'm not sure if explaining what the data is means that swapping the axis round would work still? I'm really struggling to get my head round what type of chart will best display my data

smssms

I would use XY Scatter for this type of 'graph'. It is in Excel so I'm sure the free clones will have it too. It will 'graph' any two columns of data.

WaywardDriver

steelframedhouse wrote: »

I'm not sure! The chart is to try and build up a picture of when my dog is having seizures - she's on anti-epileptic medication but has had a bit of a relapse so I was trying to create a chart/graph to build up a picture of when it's happening (seems to be mainly overnight/in the early hours of the morning) - my example has the times on the vertical axis and dates on the horizontal access so opposite to your suggestion - I'm not sure if explaining what the data is means that swapping the axis round would work still? I'm really struggling to get my head round what type of chart will best display my data

OK seems to me that the actual day on which the event occurs isn't particularly important - you're more interested in the time of day. So suggest you group day into say 4-hour time slots then tally the number of times the event occurs in each of these time slots over a number of days - think you said 14. For example the event occurs 6 times between 0000-0359, 8 times between 0400-0759, 4 times between 0800-1159 and so on. Then present these numbers in a chart - the correct statistical term is histogram. In Excel you would select the numbers (6,8,4 etc) and Insert either a Column chart where the time slots are on the horizontal axis or a Bar chart where the time slots are on the vertical axis - presentational difference only.
A crude line drawing of the bar chart would be:

0000-0359| ******
0400-0759| *********
0800-1159| ****
etc