Scatter and bubble charts

To get started creating a chart, see Creating quick charts or Creating and editing charts in Layout mode.

To choose a chart type, define the axes, and include a legend:

  1. Find the records you want to chart. See Making a find request.

    If you are charting delimited data stored in a single record or data from related records, you must specify data source settings. See Specifying the data source for a chart.

  2. In the Chart Setup dialog box, choose a chart type. See About chart types.
  3. Enter the following axis settings:

    4. For

    Do this

    X-Axis Title

    and

    Y-Axis Title

    Type a title or click Specify button, choose Specify Field Name or Specify Calculation, complete the dialog box, and click OK.

    X-Axis Data

    and

    Y-Axis Data

    Click Specify button to specify a data series for each axis. For example, you might plot product development costs on the x-axis and product revenue on the y-axis.

    Note  The x-axis must be number field type. For example, the profit gained.

    Radius Data
    (Bubble charts only)

    Click Specify button to specify a data series for the third data series you want to include in this comparison. For example, radius data might show the profit margin between cost and revenue for each product. This chart would reveal which product is most profitable rather than which product generates the most revenue.

    Label Data

    Click Specify button to specify a label for each data point.

    Symbol
    (Scatter charts only)

    Choose a symbol to mark each data point in the chart, or choose None to hide symbols. Symbol color is determined by the color scheme setting in the Styles area of the Chart inspector. See Changing the look of a chart.
  4. If you’re creating a quick chart and it contains summary data, you can click the Summary menu in the Chart inspector and select a different summary type.
  5. To specify additional data series for the y-axis, click Add Y Series, then repeat step 3 to complete the Series Name and Data settings.
    • To specify another y-axis series, click +.
    • To remove a data series from the y-axis, select the series, then click –.
    • To change the order of the y-axis data series, drag items in the list.
  6. Select Show Legend to display a legend in the chart. To change labels in the legend, edit the Series Name and click outside the text box.
  7. To set axis options, see Formatting and scaling chart axes.
  8. To change the color scheme, legend appearance, or font style, click Style in the Chart inspector. See Changing the look of a chart.
  9. Click Print or Save as Layout (quick charts) or Done (Layout mode charts) to finish the chart. See Creating quick charts or Creating and editing charts in Layout mode.

Notes 

  • In scatter and bubble charts, x-axis and y-axis values must be numerical.
  • X-axis values are typically an explanatory variable (the cause).
  • Y-axis values are typically a response variable (the effect).
  • Bubble charts are an extension of scatter charts and give you the ability to plot a second response variable.
  • The radius display in a bubble chart shows the relative magnitude of radius data points rather than their precise values. Therefore, if radius data values are very small (for example, 0.2, 0.5.and 0.7), bubbles display large enough that you can distinguish the difference and relationship between them.