Bubble Chart

[blackcell]

This chart gives a visual representation of events including their magnitude, time of day, day of week, portrays relevance by recency and organizes data types by color. Currently I am using it to correlate down times for different resources at our company such as main server, file server, web etc. Time of day intervals across a week time frame will appear as lines extending from the outside ring to the center, day of week events appear as circles, and time and day of week specific events will appear as clumps. I am currently still working through the math(trigonometry) to orient the plots in a 24 hour clock face to visualize time.

 

First question is this. Has anybody found anything like this on the web or do you know a specific name for this type of chart?

 

Second question. What are your thoughts on this?

 

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[.josh]

I think it looks kind of pretty but probably isn't going to be terribly useful as a chart.  Seems like you are trying to put too much info into one chart...charts are supposed to be an easy, quick way to look at one or two metrics at a time.  Beyond that...well if you are spending most of your time trying to look at the legend or other labels...then that's a good sign that you've put too much into it.

 

Also, I see no apparent pattern to the stuff plotted on that chart...I really don't see how it's supposed to actually help you with anything.

[requinix]

An Archimedean spiral would be better at showing time of day - just one unbroken line. The colors seem arbitrary but I can't tell what is what; a legend and even an abbreviation in/by the circle would help a lot, otherwise I'm making guesses (such as red=something bad, green=something good, etc - use those presumptions to your advantage).

 

For the math, begin with parametric equations in polar coordinates, then convert them into linear equations in cartesian coordinates (best) or convert resultant values individually (worse). To start with,

theta = (time of day in seconds from the beginning of the week / 86400) * 360°
r = a + b * theta

Mind the rotation (as theta=0 represents the +X axis, not the +Y axis).

 

It looks like a kind of polar area pie chart (in that angles and distance represent data) and bubble chart hybrid.

[blackcell]

I think it looks kind of pretty but probably isn't going to be terribly useful as a chart.  Seems like you are trying to put too much info into one chart...charts are supposed to be an easy, quick way to look at one or two metrics at a time.  Beyond that...well if you are spending most of your time trying to look at the legend or other labels...then that's a good sign that you've put too much into it.

 

Also, I see no apparent pattern to the stuff plotted on that chart...I really don't see how it's supposed to actually help you with anything.

The opacity to fade back(ie anything more than one month ago begins to fade out) is probably useless.

 

This is depicting a companies resource downtime.

I am still currently developing checkboxes, dropdowns and date specifiers to view by resource, date, day of week, and such.

Understand:

Resource as in the web server(xampp), the hard drive space(which becomes an issue when a sql table on our ERP system begins to run wild), terminal server availability, internet access across two connections, vpn to another division physically located elsewhere.

Colors represent the resource variation(ie green is internet connections, red is main server critical components, orange is xampp etc).

When trying to find a way to spot a trend that will lead to conflicting issues with a complicated network of interacting systems, there is no such thing as representing too much data in one chart. If breaking this data up, you spend time trying to correlate trends found between the separated data to extrapolate meaning.

 

Don't look at this as you trying to interpret my charts meanings. Look at it from a viewpoint of being able to define your own meanings of each. It isn't too much data unless if you have an IQ of 30. If you look at it(program not picture) for more than 30 seconds you figure it out. I should have mentioned you hover over each bubble to see the information about the event seen in the lower right.

 

I showed this to two co-workers gave them a 2 minute explanation of what the legend(I need to write) shows them and they understood it. After looking at it for 15 minutes we immediately spotted causes of xampp going down at the same time during varying days of the week(seen in the 160-170 degree dot extending line) and corrected the issue. We also found something is happening with our internet connection on varying times Wednesday which we are looking at still.

 

But maybe it is too complicated. Good luck trying to look at line data and find patterns or trends.

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

Resource|Start|End|Duration|

 

I should have shown you an interactive example but don't currently have a domain to throw it up on. I wish some people on the internet would take more than 12 seconds to look at and critique something. It may be worthless everywhere else but I think it is pretty clever and has already proved useful. Thanks for your lecturing 2 cents on how it was a waste of time.

[blackcell]

The colors seem arbitrary but I can't tell what is what; a legend and even an abbreviation in/by the circle would help a lot, otherwise I'm making guesses (such as red=something bad, green=something good, etc - use those presumptions to your advantage).

As stated in the original post, colors represents resource such as web server, terminal servers, internet connection. Sorry for the lack of a legend still.

 

An Archimedean spiral would be better at showing time of day - just one unbroken line.

That would not achieve the same thing. If you have a constant downtime of resources, it would form an Archimedean circle, but that is only because of the way the graph is layed out(clock face). I want the separation to see different instances.

 

Also, the math seems straight forward, but for some reason it isn't.

 

//This is recreating the basic principles but not the code itself.
//Graph circle is 700x700px.

$UTS = strtotime($Evenstart);
$PixelsPerMinute = 
$DOW = date("w",$UTS);//Gives numeric rep of day of week. 0-Sun 6-Sat
$HOU= date("H",$UTS);//Given Hour
$MIN= date("i",$UTS);//Given Minute
$DayOffset = 50*$DOW;//50 Pixels per day will push the time into the next day's circle. Before you argue sit down and do the math. Remember there is a coordinate offset before the final coordinates are given.
$LengthHyp = 

You know what I will just post the code when I get back to it, I am tired of recreating it all.

But in short, the length of day which will be the extension to the outside of the circle creating the hyp, is (dow*50)+((Hour*60) *PixelsPerMinute) + (Minute * Pixels per minute).

To find the angle created it is .25 degrees per minute reversed since clocks run opposite of the normal path of a circle.

Then using some trig functions x = cos(angle)/hyp or something like that I would have to sit redo the equations, you get x and y depending on the quadrant the time is in.

 

For some reason by the end my coordinates draw the data plot slowly away from the desired angle as I progress in time from sunday to saturday. So what should be 45 degrees(0300) turns out being sunday45 degrees monday 48 degrees(estimated) tuesday 53 degrees(estimated) wed 60 degrees(estimated) and so on where I am approx 15 degrees off by the time I mark a 0300 plot for each sunday-saturday. I still havent compensated for the center of the data plot since you are placing the top left corner at the coordinates specified which requires more trig to find the offset but for a 5px X 5px circle, there shouldn't be 15 degree deviation.

[.josh]

I didn't say it was a waste of time, I said it looks like too much info crammed into 1 space, and no apparent pattern to it all.  You can hardly fault me for saying that when out of your own mouth you acknowledged not providing enough info here, and even go on to acknowledge bugs in it.  You showed your coworkers an interactive program and legends and explanations, not to mention they work within the context of this data.  Now compare that to what you've shown us.  What exactly did you expect?

 

But even if you were to provide lots more info...I have a feeling I would probably still say the same thing.  The whole point of charts and graphs and visual representations is that they aren't supposed to take more than a few seconds to figure out and require explanation other than some footnotes.  If you think it will help you then more power to you, but I don't see that as being a hit for a general audience.  IMO you should make it several charts or graphs or whatever, showing different things together...more like a dashboard. 

 

You asked for opinions and I gave mine, and I happen to work in the web analytics industry.  Don't get all snippy and defensive talking about 30 level IQs just because you didn't get the feedback you wanted to hear, based on the limited presentation you gave.

[blackcell]

Thank you for the feedback.