12 messages in com.googlegroups.google-chart-apiRe: Negative numbers
FromSent OnAttachments
Stuart Langridge07 Dec 2007 03:58 
Marty Alchin07 Dec 2007 07:22 
Stuart Langridge07 Dec 2007 08:43 
helly11 Dec 2007 02:21 
tez11 Dec 2007 04:29 
helly11 Dec 2007 06:22 
tez11 Dec 2007 11:25 
Barry Hunter11 Dec 2007 14:04 
Abby24 Jan 2008 10:58 
Felipe Barone24 Jan 2008 11:32 
Stuart Langridge24 Jan 2008 11:46 
Abby25 Jan 2008 10:39 
Subject:Re: Negative numbers
From:helly (marc@google.com)
Date:12/11/2007 06:22:05 AM
List:com.googlegroups.google-chart-api

Hi Terry,

the thing is that whatever range we chose here users have to normalize. That said it doesn't matter at all which range we offer. We could also have allowed to pass in two values for minimum and maximum value. But then either those two would apply for all data series (there are graph types that support more than one), or we had to require that the range be specified for all data series separately. Either way you still need to normalize and even worse you need to pass more data then necessary as part of the URL.

regards marcus

On Dec 11, 1:29 pm, tez <terr@googlemail.com> wrote:

I dunno, i think Marty has a fair point. H wasn't asking for floats etc, just the ability to plot from -50 to +50 instead of 0 to 100 (if i'm understanding him). Which as Stuart points out is awkward as things stand and definitely not intuitive. Terry

On Dec 11, 10:21 am, helly <marc@google.com> wrote:

Hi Marty,

I just read your blog and am really wondering. We simply allow normalized data. That is you map whatever data you want to the range of 0 to 100. We do this as that allows for shorter URLs. Given the fact that all browsers cut of URLs this is the better solution than to transport real floats or any other more complex encoding. Also the API is designed for with limited data points in mind. That said it shouldn't be a problem for you to scale your data when generating the URL. Looking at what other people did in the first two days after publishing it does not seem to be to hard to do so. At least we already got source code for ABAP, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby and maybe I even overlooked something.

marcus

On Dec 7, 4:23 pm, "Marty Alchin" <gulo@gamemusic.org> wrote:

I was shocked to seenegativenumbersignored as well. I can accept limits in data size, as it's relatively simple to scale a data set down to be within those limits, butnegativenumbersare a necessary part of any charting software.

While it is indeed possible to "fake"negativenumbersusing a line chart (although you still have the "real" x axis at the bottom, just confusing people), it's still impossible in a bar chart. There are many valid uses fornegativenumbersin bar charts, such as the US deficit graph[1] on the main page over at sparkline.org.

Google, we're not asking for a pony here, just support for a fundamental aspect of real-world data.

-Gul