Suggestions on how to Chart this data?

[dangermouse1981]

Hi all,

First post so please go easy on me - just looking for a bit of advice from the pro's on how to visualise a data series.

I have a series of percentages (all different) that can be categories by the group that caused them, and have occured over time.

What would be the best way to visualise the data to evaluate change overtime? Giving due credit to how each individual category relates to each other. There are about 10 categories (text).

It may be as simple as a line chart, but I was wondering if it was possible to create some kind of histogram?

Just looking for a bit of advice - opinions welcome.

Thanks,

Steve

[bluerog]

I'll give this a shot if you provide some data. Percentages generally do not add or compare well. It's better to have the numbers that make up the "percentage" when possible.

Give a sample data table.

What kind of over "time" are you talking about (Hour? Month? Daily? 16 years out of 900?).

Are we talking about percentages between 0% and 100% (think "grades") or -498% to 350% (think car sales where you sold 5 Fords last year, and increased 300% by selling 15 this year).

Pivot tables work great for comparing groups of numbers.

[dangermouse1981]

Hi bluerog,

Your thoughts would be much appreciated - I have the actual numbers but its the ratio that is actually the important value.

I've attached a set of sample data in the public Google Spreadsheet at - essentially its email open rates from a number of different campaigns.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...Bb2pOUlE&hl=en

We're talking percentages that are 0-100 and where I refer to time I'm refering to semi-random days when email campaigns were sent.

Essentially I want to show how open rate has changed over time for each category.

Any ideas much appreciated.

Cheers,

Steve

[teylyn]

dangermouse, this forum has a very convenient functionality to attach files. there is no need to link to a Google spreadsheet. You can upload a file by clicking "Go Advanced" below and then the paper clip icon.