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Hansinator255's avatar
Hansinator255
Regular Visitor
7 years ago
Solved

Scatter Plot or Line Plot with correctly spaced X values

I'm trying to create a scatter plot with x and y values, similar to how I would do it in Excel. I can write a query to associate distinct numeric x and y values, but when I plot these values, the scatterplot is drawn so that all plots are evenly spaced along the x axis.

 

For instance, I have three points, (2, 3), (3, 5), and (5, 8). Each point is correctly drawn along the y axis at y=3, 5, and 8, respectively. However, while I would expect (3, 5) and (5, 8) to be twice the distance along the x-axis as (2, 3) and (3, 5) are, they are instead evenly spaced. Displaying my data as a line plot produces similar behavior.

 

Each data point also has its own label along the x axis, rather than periodically labeling values as is done with the y-axis. My guess is that it's because Power BI is treating my x-axis data as categories, which would also explain the spacing behavior.

 

Any idea why this is happening, and how to get the scatterplot to behave like Excel?

 

EDIT: A scatterplot in R (drag in the data values from the PowerBI query, use "plot(dataset)") also works correctly. So it's not an issue with my data being malformed.

  • Hi Hansinator255 , 

    What is your desired result?

    You could modify the X distance and Y distance for your visual in the setting:

    Regards,

    Daniel He

  • Hansinator255's avatar
    Hansinator255
    7 years ago

    OK, I think I figured it out. While my data is numerical, it was not being statically typed as such, and I had to add a Change Type step to my query to change the X and Y columns to Decimal Number. When I did this, the X and Y axes appeared correctly scaled and I could modify the axis scales for both.

4 Replies

  • v-danhe-msft's avatar
    v-danhe-msft
    Microsoft Employee

    Hi Hansinator255 , 

    What is your desired result?

    You could modify the X distance and Y distance for your visual in the setting:

    Regards,

    Daniel He

    • Hansinator255's avatar
      Hansinator255
      Regular Visitor

      v-danhe-msftThat does look like what I want, and I do get those options for the Y axis on my data. I do not, however, get those options on my X axis and instead get options for displaying categories, even though both my x and y values are numeric.

       

      Note also that an R scatterplot displays this data correctly. I've edited the question post to reflect this.