CIShell Manual : Horizontal Bar Graph

Created by Patrick Philips, last modified by David Coe on Feb 06, 2012

"Warning"

Unsupported, replaced by Temporal Bar Graph

Description

This algorithm visualizes numeric data over time. It accepts CSV (tabular) datasets, including NSF grant data. Note: Unlike the Horizontal Bar Graph (not included version), this visualization does not work with records lacking start or end dates. When visualizing burst detection data lacking start or end dates, edit the *.csv file to include the oldest or most recent date where start or end dates are lacking.

The output of this visualization consists of labeled horizontal bars that correspond to records in the original dataset.

This algorithm accepts the following input parameters:

  • Label: The field used to label the bar lines.
  • Start Date: The field used for the starting date of the records that are visualized as horizontal bars.
  • End Date: The field used for the ending date of the records that are visualized as horizontal bars.
  • Size By: The field used to size the horizontal bars by.
  • Date Format: The date format to use for parsing the Start and End Dates. Possible options are "Day-Month-Year Date Format (Europe, e.g. 31/10/2010)" and "Month-Day-Year Date Format (U.S., e.g. 10/31/2010)".
  • Page Width: If Scale Output? is checked, the page width of the output PostScript.
  • Page Height: If Scale Output? is checked, the page height of the output PostScript.
  • Scale Output?: If checked, the output visualization will be scaled to fit on a page of size Page Width by Page Height.

As mentioned before, records that are missing either a start or end date (or both) will be ignored. (This is also reported on the console as warning messages.) Likewise, records that have either non-number of Infinity Size By values will be ignored.

Usage Hints

Horizontal Line Graph was originally designed to visualize NSF grant data, but most things that fits the format of "numerical values with start and end dates" is compatible and potentially interesting when visualized with it.

Special Notes

This documentation is for a different version of Horizontal Bar Graph than appears in much of the Sci2 Tutorial.