FusionCharts Forum / FusionCharts/FusionMaps for FileMaker / Suggestions & Requests

Improved Trendlines

daehl — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:57:47 GMT

Two suggestions for improving trendlines. The first should be easier.

1. It would suggest that trend lines should display regardless of the y-axis range. Currently, they do not display at all if the y-axis is not wide enough for the trendline endpoints to touch left & right edges of the chart. Seems as though it should be simple enough to clip them at the top or bottom edge (displaying whatever portion of the line would be visible). Otherwise it's often necessary to make the y-axis very large and detracts from the chart.

Here's a couple of examples to illustrate the point.

Trendline not visible:
(There's a trendline in this URL but it doesn't display because it's left edge is below the yaxis min value)
[quote]
?v=free&sep=;&chart=[chartType=Line2D;chartWidth=518;chartHeight=400]
&chartParams=[caption=Widgets Produced;subCaption=Past 6 weeks;
yAxisMinValue=0;yAxisMaxValue=20;formatNumber=0;rotateNames=1;numDivLines=4;numVDivLines=4;
animation=0;showOnTop=1;showShadow=0;]
&labels=1/6 - 1/13;1/13 - 1/20;1/20 - 1/27;1/27 - 2/3;2/3 - 2/10;2/10 - 2/17
&data=1;3;5;12;18;45
&trendlines=[startValue=-5.4286;endValue=33.4284;color=FF0000;displayValue=Trend;]
[/quote]

Trendline visible:
(Now it displays once the y axis range is increased)
[quote]
?v=free&sep=;&chart=[chartType=Line2D;chartWidth=518;chartHeight=400]
&chartParams=[caption=Widgets Produced;subCaption=Past 6 weeks;
yAxisMinValue=-10;yAxisMaxValue=20;formatNumber=0;rotateNames=1;numDivLines=5;numVDivLines=4;
animation=0;showOnTop=1;showShadow=0;]
&labels=1/6 - 1/13;1/13 - 1/20;1/20 - 1/27;1/27 - 2/3;2/3 - 2/10;2/10 - 2/17
&data=1;3;5;12;18;45
&trendlines=[startValue=-5.4286;endValue=33.4284;color=FF0000;displayValue=Trend;]
[/quote]

So basically, I'd like to see the visible portion of the trendline in the first example even though it wouldn't touch the left edge of the chart.

2. This one's more complicated, but it would be nice if there was a built-in trend line generator. I've created custom filemaker functions for calculating linear trend lines, but seems like this should be added to the charting engine. And if it were possible to add more sophisticated trend lines it sure would be nice to have other options as well (ideally a moving average or polynomial trend line).

Thanks for listening!

Limit the number of datapoints to display

daehl — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:26:02 GMT

This goes along with the prior suggestion I made for sorting datapoints (adding a sortData= command). It occurred to me that a sorting option may not be so useful unless there is some way to also control how much sorted data is displayed.

For instance, if you have a bunch of data that needs to be sorted, it may also be necessary to display just a certain number of datapoints that are either highest or lowest.

I think it would be useful to also include commands that allow that. Maybe it could be something like: "maxDataPoints=" that would apply whenever the data & labels were sorted.

So if "maxDataPoints=10" was specified, it would display only the ten largest numbers, or "maxDataPoints=-10" would display only the ten lowest numbers. Again, both of which would be determined after any built-in sorting option was used.

I can't think of any reason to implement this unless in combination with a sorting command, but I think it would be very useful.

Automatic resorting of data

daehl — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:49:33 GMT

One feature I would find useful would be to add an option to automatically re-sort the data & labels entered in the URL. A single data series would be chosen as the sort key, and it could be either sorted low-to-high or high-to-low.

Maybe a [b]sortData[/b] parameter could be added, with -1 meaning sort high-to-low, and 1 meaning sort low-to-high.

For example, given a chart:

[quote]
?v=free&sep=;&chart=[chartType=Column2D;chartWidth=518;chartHeight=400]
&chartParams=[caption=Common Problems YTD;
baseFontSize=9;formatNumber=0;yAxisMinValue=0;yAxisMaxValue=10;rotateNames=1;showhovercap=1;animation=0]
&labels=Defective componants;Componant shortage;Human error;Automation error;Unscheduled downtime;Other
&data=[seriesName=AM;showname=1;showAnchors=1;showValues=1;[b]sortData=-1[/b]]6;1;3;2;4;2
[/quote]

With the end result being that the graph would display sorted (as if the following was the actual chart URL):

[quote]
?v=free&sep=;&chart=[chartType=Column2D;chartWidth=518;chartHeight=400]
&chartParams=[caption=Common Problems YTD;
baseFontSize=9;formatNumber=0;yAxisMinValue=0;yAxisMaxValue=10;rotateNames=1;showhovercap=1;animation=0]
&labels=Defective componants;Unscheduled downtime;Human error;Automation error;Other;Componant shortage
&data=[seriesName=AM;showname=1;showAnchors=1;showValues=1]6;4;3;2;2;1
[/quote]

The primary benefit being that the labels and all other data (in the case of a multi-series chart) are automatically sorted along with the key data series.