Charting help for dates

[mathur999]

I want to do some charting of data in a medical EMR program I have in FMP 10. On the x axis I want various dates spanning several years, for example March 31 1997, feb 6 2000, july 10 2009 and dec 3 2009. The time between data points is variable. On the y axis I want numbers representing a particular blood test. When I use any plugin for filemaker or I try Filemaker 11 the chart gets drawn with all the data points on the x axis equal distance apart even though they are not as can be seen with the dates above. I wanted to do a line chart.

Anyone have any ideas of how to do this or any plugin that may help?

Thanks a bunch...

Arun...

[lsmall]

I think you can probably do this using Fusioncharts. It's probably possible in FM11, but I haven't played with it enough yet. Off the top of my head, if you were to create "placeholding" records at regular intervals eg every day or every week or every month etc and have the records without lab values self populate by calculation using the last previous data value. Then use a calculation for series labels to show the label only if that record has its own value, rather than the calculated value. Each record could have an inputed data field and a calculated data field. Series labels would be calculated by something like if (not isempty inputeddatafield;datefield;""). This should only show date labels for those records that have inputed data, but still preserve the time interval spacing with the blank records that have the last previous valid data.

I'm sure there are many other ways to do it.

Is this a DIY EMR. Are you manually inputing data or pulling it from somewhere?

[SavvyData]

Hi mathur,

The problem you describe is true of any charting program, because the dates you're providing are considered categories, not dates. If a charting program/plugin/function has a "time series" mode you may get away with providing a partial data series. Otherwise you have a "nominal" (or "ordinal") series and the plots will be equally separated.

My solution would be to throw the chart a calendar data series, where only some the Y elements have values.

Good luck,

-Lee

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Lee Lukehart

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SavvyData - Making Data Make Sense.

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[Daniel T.]

Hi SavvyData, I'm trying to accomplish the same thing (only label a few of the dates along the x-axis), would you mind elaborating a little on your advice to use a calendar data series? I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that.

I have a set of records with a date field (field type Date) and those records have one of three checkboxes selected (boolean fields, either empty or "1".) I want a line chart with one line per checkbox, showing how many records of that type were present for that day. Dates along the x-axis, but with a nicely spaced scale that only shows a label say every 7 days, so it's actually readable.

Do I need to create some calculation fields and then chart those calculations? If so what might that calculation look like?

Thanks for the help!