Can Numbers do x-y scatterplots?

That's a nice function plot! Didn't know it could do that.

I'm looking at plotting one variable vs. another. For example, suppose you plot country GDP vs. Poverty. Here's some made up data.

Country GDP Poverty

U.S. 340 .20

France 190 .16

Germany 280 .09

China 165 .45

It should produce a plot such as this, ordered by variable magnitude

rather than this, ordered by the original sequence, with equal spacing between points.

Great to read and see--and thank you for running the data through it!

I'll have to go back to the store and explore Numbers again. When I tried it before, my first graphing tries couldn't do it! User-error likely! 😁

Ah, that's good! I tested this again and discovered that the scatterplot chart choice was below the icons displayed-- it's off the screen! And without scroll bars, there's no way of knowing that there's another choice there. (That's on an iPad; I'm soon going to check out Numbers on the Mac, too.)

However, I've discovered another major limitation for my work. It does NOT seem able to do what Excel calls line scatterplots or what others would call trend lines.

That is, you have a sequence of data ordered by non-consecutive years, e.g.,

1912 140

1922 195

1938 260

1945 480

What it seems to produce in such cases is a ranked sequence--by point 1, point 2, point 3, etc. with equal spacing. In other words, it can do a line chart, with even spacing between the x-axis years... which, of course, isn't what one has in that data! The x-axis points should differ by 10 years, then 16, and then 7.

It's the same problem in Excel if you simply select line chart rather than scatter plot for such data, the data aren't displayed properly (you actually need to choose the scatter plot with lines to show the trend line).

Much historical data takes that form... where there hasn't been annual data gathering, but rather intermittent surveys.

Any ideas, Papa G.?? (Or, anyone else?!!) I have again overlooked a choice in Numbers? Or, an obvious work around?

If my verbiage isn't clear, I can post two comparative graphs showing what I mean! Thanks for any and all input!

Yes, that's it, but with the points connected by a line! In other words, a trend line. It's a pretty standard graph used in social science and applied research--shows up in reports all the time and even in business presentations--for example, sales trends, where the units or $ points over time are connected by a line, revealing whether things are going up or down-- or, getting worse or better.

Excel calls this a "Straight Marked Scatter". It's the first of their x-y scatterplots in the Chart Gallery.

Here's an example from a federal report on reading achievement trends (it's in the public domain). It just happens to show how little improvement there's been in reading in spite of a generation of testing, accountability, and standards school reform efforts!

Thanks for your continued exploration and feedback on this! It's appreciated!

Brilliant! I appreciate both your helpfulness and sense of humor!

I think I even read that you can choose between curved and straight line connections.

While I have Docs 2 Go, it doesn't seem to do charts and its approach to cell handling is counter-intuitive. I remember being wowed by the introduction of Numbers at an Apple keynote... the connected scatter plotting was holding me back. But no longer-- and much thanks to you!

When I get through with my research and writing today, I'm going to treat myself to Numbers for iOS. It'll be great fun and a reward for hard work.