Not so simple: Labeling scatterplot points - Please help

By sgfx at Fri, Feb 5 2010 8:18am |

Frequently I need to produce 2-dimensional scatterplots of labeled points for a publication. The coordinates derive from an SPSS 18 (PASW) calculation that produces illegible scatterplots if the number of points is higher than 5. In earlier times I pasted the coordinates into Excel 2004 where there existed an "add labels to points" macro that I used. This does not work anymore in Office 2008 and the built-in add label option still does not work as it should.

Earlier versions of Neooffice and Openoffice allowed labeling in a reasonably pretty way. The last versions of both, however, produce unusable results. Hence I am at a loss if I don't want to add labels manually which is a lot of lost time for more than 40 scattered points. AFAIK iWork doesn't do this either.

Since all spreadsheet apps seem to be more concerned with eye candy than with functionality, I'd appreciate any hints as to which app allows to draw and label scatterplots.

Thanks.

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Fri, 2010-02-05 09:33 — lianos

Maybe it's time to learn R?

You can do this pretty easily in R.

"Base" graphics in R are quite powerful. There is also the (great) ggplot2 package, which makes spiffy graphics. Here's the page on "scatterplotting":

http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/geom_point.html

And code for a (very simple) labeled scatter plot here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1816719/ggplot2-scatter-plot-labels

You'll need to install R + ggplot2 package to see it work, though.

Fri, 2010-02-05 11:33 — sgfx

Yes...

...maybe it's time to learn R, unfortunately. Thanks anyway.

Fri, 2010-02-05 12:15 — lbland

Scatter Plots

hi-

You can use Vvidget:

www.vvidget.org

There are many entrance points. In the Vvidget Builder "laboratory" you can use least squares to make a scatter plot, with regression (you can take the regression line out later), or you can make a normal scatter plot in a wizard, build it up by hand with the builder or program it using the Vvidget Code project. Free. If you make an application then you can distribute it for free too!

thanks!-

-lance

Sun, 2010-02-07 08:36 — David_Adalsteinsson

Label for scatterplot

DataGraph does allow you to attach labels to a scatter plot. http://www.visualdatatools.com/DataGraph/

The templates show you examples of scatter plots. Just select a column that you want to use for labels, and adjust the offset. You can also add individual labels by clicking on the Label command in the tool bar.

David