• Hi All

    Please note that at the Chandoo.org Forums there is Zero Tolerance to Spam

    Post Spam and you Will Be Deleted as a User

    Hui...

  • When starting a new post, to receive a quicker and more targeted answer, Please include a sample file in the initial post.

Adding height as 5th dimension to bubble chart

L

Lisa CVD

New Member
Hi

I want to add height as a 5th dimension to a bubble chart I have made in excel (3rd dimension - size of bubble and 4th dimension colour).

I want to basically rotate the 4D view I now have as if to look at the image like a view of a city where the different heights of the bubble add a new dimension to the chart.

Please advise if this is possible. If not in excel then in some other way?
 
Hi Lisa, and welcome to the forum!

I'm not sure what you mean by height. There are 3 dimensions in regular space (X,Y,Z). It sounds like you're counting color as the 4th. What would the 5th dimension be??

All in all, I'm not a fan of bubble charts. Perhaps you could explain what type of data you have, and what story you are trying to tell?
 
Thanks for this both.

Luke, unfortunately it needs to be a bubble chart. I have mapped efficiency versus effectiveness on the bubble with project budget influencing the size of bubble and model of delivery the colour. But now I need to show relevance. My idea is that the bubble chart is a 2D view. If we turned it into a 3D view adding depth (or height) as a 3rd dimension to show relevance.

My analogy is that the 2D bubbles serve as the footprint of a building and the height of the building being relevance. What this means is if the building is tall and in the top right quandrant then the project is efficient, effective and relevant whereas if it is short and in the bottom left quadrant it is not efficient, not effective and not relevant.

I really don't know how else to describe this. Not sure it is possible on excel. Very open to try other programmes (freeware). Hui, I will look into that.
 
Hi ,

Aside from the Excel part of it , I am somewhat confused by what you want to present ; as far as I can see you have data on the following with respect to many projects :

1. Efficiency
2. Effectiveness
3. Relevance
4. Budget Amount
5. Delivery Model

If we ignore the presentation part of it , for which you are looking for a bubble chart with additional dimensions , what does your data itself indicate ? Does it indicate any correlation between the various measures ?

I can understand that efficiency and effectiveness need not be positively correlated ; a project may be executed very efficiently , but its effectiveness may be suspect. Contrarily , a project may be very inefficient in its implementation , but it may be very effective.

I am not able to understand how effectiveness and relevance are not correlated ; if a project is effective and relevant , or not effective and not relevant , you do not need to project both measures , since displaying just one is enough ( both measures are positively correlated ). It is only if your data shows that there are projects which are effective but not relevant , or ineffective but relevant that you need to display both measures.

Have you first analysed your data to see how many dimensions are needed to display all the correlations within the data ?

Narayan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top