How to Create a Scatter Bar Chart

What is a Scatter Bar Chart

It’s sometimes useful to see the distribution of points from a Scatter Chart on only one dimension. Our original Scatter Bars do that.

1. Horizontal Scatter Bar Charts “compress” all points from a single-series Scatter chart on the vertical Y axis and render them on a single horizontal X line.
2. Vertical Scatter Bar Charts “compress” the points from a single-series Scatter chart on the horizontal X axis and render them on a single vertical Y line.
3. Grouped Scatter Bars separately show either horizontal or vertical lines with points collected from different series, from a Grouped Scatter Chart.

Two major applications of the Scatter Bars, where space is limited, but you still want to show more related visual information:

• Histogram and/or Distribution Plot with Horizontal Scatter Bar
• Box Plot with Scatter Chart and Vertical Scatter Bar

How to Simulate a Scatter Bar

Following image helps better understanding how the Scatter chart points are “compressed” into a horizontal Scatter Bar below. The process is similar for vertical Scatter Bars.

We can actually simulate this with existing chart types. In the Scatter Chart, replace all values being compressed with a constant, and you get all points on a single line. This chart, for instance, returns for all Y values the number 1 instead. Replace with 1 the X values, and you return a vertical line of points.

Steps to Create a Scatter Bar Chart

Start Visual Xtractor or Data Xtractor. Connect to a database. Create or design a SQL query. Run the query and check the results.

1. Display and enable the Chart query builder.
2. Select one or more numeric columns for either X or Y as Point Charts – Scatter Bar.
3. Rotate rows with columns, if you want a vertical line instead.

Scatter Bar Demo Query

Look for the ready-to-use Grouped Scatter Bars generated query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Charts > Cartesian Charts folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if not there.

Generated demo queries must work for any database, with no restriction. They use constant values generated on-the-fly and your database SQL engine, but do not depend on data from your tables, and never alter your database in any way.

Customize your Scatter Bar

1. Change the default marker shapes.
2. Hide axis labels, axis titles and data labels.
3. Split the Grouped Scatter Bar charts into separate single-series Scatter Bar charts.
4. Switch from single to multi-color.
5. Switch into the 3D view.

Conclusion

• Creating Scatter Bars in Data Xtractor or Visual Xtractor is easy and straightforward: set one or more numeric columns as Scatter Bar, and you get the equivalent of a Scatter Chart on one dimension.
• Switch rows with columns to show a vertical instead of a horizontal line of dots.
• All builtin powerful features of these chart type are common to most other charts: filtering series through the legend items, interactivity, monochrome or grayscale colors, rich axis and data label selections etc.
• Switch to another builtin chart theme, or customize your own, for any possible color or other styles.