Bubble Graphs

A bubble graph is a graph in which data is represented by the location and size of round data markers (bubbles).

Standard use of a bubble graph

You use bubble graphs to show correlations among three measures, especially when you have a number of data items and you want to see the general relationships.

Example: Standard use of a bubble graph

You could use a bubble graph to plot salaries, years of experience, and productivity for your work force. You expect higher salaries for more experienced employees, and you expect these employees to be more productive.

Example of a bubble graph

If this is true, your bubble graph would show large bubbles in the upper-right quadrant of the graph. If, however, you find that most of the large bubbles appear in the lower-left quadrant, then you might want to look at your salary structure or your definition of productivity.

Two bubble graphs

Available varieties of bubble graphs

The following types of bubble graphs are available:

Graph properties for bubble graphs

The DepthRadius and DepthAngle properties of the Graph object together specify whether an area graph appears to have depth.

Data structure of a bubble graph

The following figure shows the data structure of a bubble graph.

Example bubble graph

The data structure for bubble graphs is as follows:

Each data marker in a bubble graph represents three group values:

Data guidelines for bubble graphs

Bubble graph data has the following guidelines:

Example: Bubble graph data

The following bubble graph is populated with the Sales, Units, and Quota measures, in that order. For simplicity in this example, each series of data has only one marker in it. Normally, bubble graphs have a number of markers.

Simple bubble graph

The following crosstab shows the same data as the graph. Notice that there are three columns of data for each marker in the graph. This picture assumes that isDataRowShownAsASeries returns true.

Grid of data

Handling Problems in Graph Data
Specifying Data for a Graph
Example: Setting JDBC Data on a Bubble Graph
Example: Setting Data from a File on a Bubble Graph