How to Organize Your Data for Charting

• Your data must be arranged in rows and columns like this:
  
  

  Categories	Series-1	Series-2	Series-3
  Jan	15	32	35
  Feb	27	21	28
  Mar	32	17	23
  Apr	43	29	16

   

  
  

• There must be one column (down the left side) for "categories" (eg. "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr" as in the above example)
  
  
• There must be one row (across the top) for series names (eg. "Series-1", "Series-2", "Series-3" as in the above example). This is required even if you are only charting a single series.
  
  
• There must be one column for each plot.

[Simple Line Charts]  [Pie Charts]  [Stock Charts]  [More Complex Charts]

To create a simple line chart (one line), your data must have:

• A column to contain the categories (represented by each position along the horizontal axis of your chart)
• A column to contain the data values (represented by positions up the vertical axis of your chart)
• A row for the series name
• A row for each data point

For a simple line chart, your data might look like this:

 

Categories	Series-1
Jan	15
Feb	27
Mar	32
Apr	43

 

To create a pie chart, only two columns are required; your data must have:

• A column to contain the categories; each category will appear as one slice of the pie
• A column to contain the data values for each pie slice
• A row for the series name
• A row for each pie slice

For a pie chart, your data might look like this:

 

Categories	Series-1
Jan	15
Feb	27
Mar	32
Apr	43

 

To create a stock chart, five columns are required for one stock plot; your data must have:

• A column to contain the date values (typically entered as day-month-year)
• A column for each of: low value, high value, opening value, and closing value
• A row for the column headings
• A row for each date

For a stock chart, your data might look like this:

Date	Low	High	Open	Close
1-May-2002	15	17	15.5	16.5
2-May-2002	16	19	17	18
3-May-2002	21	23	21	22.5
4-May-2002	24	27	25	26
5-May-2002	26	28	26.5	27.5

 

To create a more complex chart (perhaps stacked or side-by-side bars, or lines, or bar-and-line), the categories column will always be represented along the horizontal axis; one series column might be represented by a line,  another by a set of bars, and so forth.

rChart on-line demonstration by rObjects - http://www.robjects.com