Help creating special type of line chart

**zeospeed** · 09-01-2013, 04:53 AM

Hi,

I would greatly appreciate your help.

I have just completed a medical study looking at 3 groups A, B and C. All these groups undergo the same treatment and are followed up to see if several variables improve over time.

I would like to create a chart that demonstrates the following:

1. x axis (time in days)
2. y axis (variable being followed up)
3. I would like to create a line chart that shows how the variable changes with EACH patient over time. So in the end I would have a line chart that shows each patient's progress (additionally with groups A, B and C superimposed on the same chart).

Is this possible with excel?

Many Thanks

**oeldere** · 09-01-2013, 05:02 AM

I bet you get better anwers on your question, if you follow the advice in the link below.

http://www.excelforum.com/the-water-...-question.html

**MrShorty** · 09-01-2013, 09:55 AM

A sample file probably would help quite a bit to get specific suggestions.

In general, I find that most of these kind of charting questions end up really being spreadsheet type questions. If the data is laid out in the spreadsheet in an undesirable way, then you will have difficulty creating the chart. If the data are laid out well, then the chart will be easy to create.

IMO, the key to getting a separate line for each patient and for each group is to get the data in the spreadsheet separated out into individual patients and groups. It is hard to give specific suggestions for this, but this might look like:

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This table can then be easily plotted in a line or scatter plot, and each patient will have its own line and own legend entry (if you include a legend).
I don't know how extensive your data set is, but you might want to be aware that Excel is limited to 255 individual data series and a total of 256000 data points (just in case this is a very extensive study with more than 255 patients).