The title of today’s post has nothing to do with boobs. I have some con­fu­sion regarding my Daytum page. I am trying to figure out what a “stacked line chart” is. I found exam­ples of a this time of data visu­al­iza­tion on a web­site that explains how to chart spread­sheet data. The Daytum web­site “how-to” pages also pro­vide an expla­na­tion for this type of chart. How­ever, when I use the Daytum site dis­play a data set, the resulting chart does not appear to cor­rectly present the data.

A stacked line chart appears to be a way to present mul­tiple data sets on a single chart. For example, if you col­lect two sets of quan­ti­ta­tive data (counts of some­thing) over a period of time, you can graph the time-dependent quan­ti­ties together. For each time (data point on the x axis) you plot two points: the quan­tity recorded for the first data set and the sum quan­tity of the two sets. This results in a graph that not only shows the change in quan­tity recorded from one time to the next, but also the change in total quan­tity over time. Yes, it is dif­fi­cult to explain. Visit Daytum your­self and see their “how-to” page.

In my case, it is pos­sible that the dis­play I saw was wrong. Daytum is still in beta. Of course, I may simply not under­stand how the chart works. The quan­ti­ties used for the x axis of the graph for my data set is unclear. The units are not spec­i­fied. Daytum charts are sup­posed to look pretty first an be useful second.

On an unre­lated note, I have become addicted to an iPhone App called “Lux Touch”. It was intro­duced to me by my friend Giles and it is basi­cally Risk for the iPhone (in a very simple form).

I might need an intervention.