On Sun, 6 Jan 2019 19:09:59 +0100 Markus Elfring <Markus.Elfring@web.de> wrote:
I just made a chart of some data in LibreOffice Calc and was disappointed both by the process (very slow) and by the results (apparent lack of ability to modify the view).
I am looking also for possibilities to improve the software behaviour further.
I'm running Version 6.1.3.2 of LibreOffice (actually the openSUSE build for Leap 15.0). I'm running a machine with an i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz and 8 GB main memory.
I assume that your system configuration was not too busy with other stuff besides the desired diagram generation.
Correct.
My spreadsheet data is in columns. Hourly samples of temperature and humidity.
Did you import these values as facts from a sensor data text file?
Yes, a CSV file.
Would you like to perform any advanced time series analysis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_series
I want to look at the data to see if anything stands out and keep it for future analysis of my house's performance. Whether any of that counts as 'advanced' I do not know.
Column A is dates and column B is the times of day. I've also created column C that adds A+B to get a single value.
How do you think about to combine these fields in a data preparation step so that extra formulas could be avoided?
I think I shouldn't need to worry about stuff like this. In fact the data in the CSV file was a DATETIME, but I couldn't figure out whether it was possible to import that to LO in a sensible way, so I added space to the separators and split it into two fields so the DATE format could cope.
Then ten columns of humidity data and eleven columns of temperature data. There are currently just over 5000 rows of samples.
The data amount is also interesting.
In what way?
Would you like to filter such records any more for your needs?
I don't know.
Making the chart was extremely slow. Every time I changed the Name of a line of the chart I had to wait whilst it cycled through several steps to make the change.
Will it help to store computation results into corresponding aggregate tables? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregate_(data_warehouse)
Err, I shouldn't need to think about any of this. The software tool should handle it competently.
Initially when I removed some empty columns from the data range, it took an age to do so. etc.
How do you think about to move data cleaning operations to an other step in your work flow? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cleaning
I'm not sure what you're suggesting. You mean the LO CSV import should be able to discard some columns?
Does the selected chart type influence your run time experience in significant ways? https://help.libreoffice.org/6.1/en-GB/text/schart/01/wiz_chart_type.html
Yes. A line chart is the wrong type. LO requires me to select XY. The tool should either give me better help or automatically select the chart type better based on the data.
Now I've created the chart and got some reasonable lines across it, but what I hope are the dates and times along the X axis are just a mess and I've no idea how to make them display usefully.
Which display style would you find useful for data from the time dimension?
LO XY works.
I haven't found any way to select individual points on the chart to display the detailed value of that point or all the values at that time (a cursor).
Is there any fine-tuning needed in the graphical user interface?
Several people have mentioned tooltips should appear, but they don't for me for some reason. And I feel sure there are lots of things that could be improved in the UI.
Nor do I see a way to temporarily hide individual data lines to more clearly see other particular lines, for example.
Would you need outlines here? https://help.libreoffice.org/6.1/en-GB/text/scalc/01/12080000.html
I don't think so, I just want to be able to temprarily hide some of the lines representing individual data sets.
If there's any way to do these things with an LO chart, and to speed it up, I'd be grateful for any pointers.
Do you find the talk “Improving Calc parallel calculations” by Luboš Luňák interesting? https://libocon.org/assets/Conference/Tirana/llunak-calc.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QpTsUGUOkM
Would you like to trigger any more evolution for chart software? https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122011
Or if there are better options out there that can read .ods or .csv and display charts, that would be very interesting. Google just wants to tell me about a lot of diagramming tools.
How helpful do you find the alternatives? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_charting_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statistical_packages
The lists aren't terribly helpful. Lists of time-series software are closer, but still no banana. Pretty much all assume that the graph is a final output of some carefully crafted process, whereas I see it as an initial attempt to view some data that I should be able to change on the fly (zoom time, hide datasets, integrate/differentiate etc). I had decided instead to import the CSV data into my emoncms system, which has a graph module that is much more functional and performant. But I've now learned of InfluxDB and Graphana, which may be interesting. I haven't had time to investigate them yet. Cheers, Dave
Regards, Markus
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