Scatter plot question

Question

Scatter plot question

I have the new NUMBERS app (3.5.2) on my Mac.

I want to plot X and Y data points. I think this is called a SCATTER PLOT.

But all data points in the graph are one color/ one symbol. See below. For 3 data points this may be fine BUT I have 50 data points.

I want to be able to have different colors for each data point plotted in the graph.

If I create a table of data as per below image, would this solve the issue? If so, what type of graph do I plot?

I have tried lost of variations and even in EXCEL but nothing seems to be graphed.

Thank you.

Michael

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), lives with iPad, eMate, PowerBooks 540c, 160 and a Newton 2000

Posted on Jan 20, 2015 9:38 PM

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Answer 1

Badunit

Level 7

30,714 points

Jan 21, 2015 7:27 AM in response to Michael Vallance

This is how charts work. That includes Numbers, Excel and other spreadsheets. A column of values is called a series and all data points for a series will be the same color. I think it will be difficult to tell the variation in colors for 50 different colors and it will take a while to create it. I believe Numbers starts repeating colors after a while (I can't remember how many series before it repeats)

Assuming your first column is your X values, keep that column as a single column like in your first screenshot. Each data point that is currently in your second column will need to be in its own column (but on the same row as before). You may have to "Edit Data References" on the chart and select to plot columns as series (found at the bottom-left of the Numbers window) or it will assume you are plotting "rows as series". And you will have to manually change the colors of nearly all the data points on the chart if you want 50 different colors.

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Answer 2

Jan 21, 2015 5:20 PM in response to Badunit

This is so helpful. Thank you very much.

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