You can display mean, mode, median, standard deviation, certainty, and other marker lines on assumption, forecast, and overlay charts. These lines help you locate various values in the charted distribution.
If you have activated the process capability features and have entered an LSL, USL, or Target value, you can include marker lines for them in forecast charts (Viewing LSL, USL, and Target Marker Lines). |
Base Case is the value in an assumption, decision variable, or forecast cell prior to running the simulation. For forecasts, Certainty Range shows lines at the certainty range endpoints. Marker lines are shown with labels, such as Mean = $125.
You can press Ctrl+m to cycle through the median, mean, and base case or mode, depending on chart type. Press Ctrl+p to cycle through every 10th percentile.
To display marker lines:
Display the Chart Type tab of the Chart Preferences dialog. The Marker Lines group is displayed on that tab.
If more than one series is displayed in the list box at the top of the tab, select one to work with. The settings on the page apply to the selected series.
To display a marker line, check the box for that item. If you choose Standard Deviation, Percentile, or Value, another dialog opens:
For Standard Deviation, enter the standard deviation(s) where you want a marker to be displayed. If you enter more than one, separate them with commas. Then, choose whether you want the marker(s) to be displayed below the mean (technically indicating negative standard deviations), above the mean, or both above and below.
For Percentile, select the group of percentiles where you want markers to be displayed or choose Custom and create the own group of percentile points separated by commas.
For Value, enter the x-axis value where the line should be displayed in the Value field and click Add. If you want, enter an optional label and check Show Value On Marker Line to display the value on the chart. You can click New to add another value.
While you have a series selected, consider adjusting the chart type (Setting the Chart Type) and color (Setting Chart Colors) too.
When settings for the current series are complete, follow steps 2 and 3 to customize settings for any other series in the chart.
When all the settings are complete, click OK.
The chart is displayed with the new settings.
If the marker lines fall outside the maximum or minimum value displayed on a chart, they will not be displayed on the chart. For example, this can happen with standard deviations of plus or minus 2 or 3 for uniform distributions.