drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

i'm trying to draw two normal distribution bell graphs side by side in a same
drawing.

i was able to draw two different bell graphs following the help provided
earlier, but still cannot draw them together with some overlapping tails.

perhaps, the difficulty i have is "selecting" the columns (range?) . i
"selected" all four columns (two columns for taller graph, and the other two
columns for shorter graph), but it draws a linear graph.

any help is appreciated.

drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

Provide more detail about exactly what you did and what results you got to
help us identify what is going wrong. Absent those details, I will guess
from your "linear graph" phrase that you are using a "Line" graph. If so,
switch to an "XY (Scatter)" graph.

Jerry

"ChartsNewbie" wrote:

i'm trying to draw two normal distribution bell graphs side by side in a same
drawing.

i was able to draw two different bell graphs following the help provided
earlier, but still cannot draw them together with some overlapping tails.

perhaps, the difficulty i have is "selecting" the columns (range?) . i
"selected" all four columns (two columns for taller graph, and the other two
columns for shorter graph), but it draws a linear graph.

any help is appreciated.

drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

thanks for the timely response,

here is how i did.

i first followed Tushar Mehta's a tutorial to create a normal curve:
http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/ch...n/#enumeration

then, followed by creating two more column w/ mean of 20 and Std Dev of 1
(instead of 10 & 2 respectively).

i am able to plot both of these normal curve individually, using "XY
(Scatter)" - "smoothed Lines w/out markers".

i'd like to plot these side-by-side w/ tails crossing over.

what i did was selecting all four columns, then proceeded w/ "XY (Scatter)"
- "smoothed Lines w/out markers". and result was a positive linear graph.

Data Range is displayed as "=Sheet1!$B$2;$C$35, Sheet1!$L$2;$M$35

"Jerry W. Lewis" wrote:

Provide more detail about exactly what you did and what results you got to
help us identify what is going wrong. Absent those details, I will guess
from your "linear graph" phrase that you are using a "Line" graph. If so,
switch to an "XY (Scatter)" graph.

Jerry

drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

On Mon, 14 May 2007, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
ChartsNewbie said:
what i did was selecting all four columns, then proceeded w/ "XY (Scatter)"
- "smoothed Lines w/out markers". and result was a positive linear graph.

You can't just select a rectangle and expect the Excel Chart Wizard to
put everything in the right place. It's not that smart, and your custom
requirement is exceeding the limits of its abilities. You'll have to
learn to design the chart to meet your requirement.

The "positive linear graph" you are seeing is the second x-range (third
column), that is being plotted as a series against the first x-range .
The second and fourth columns, your two bell curves, can probably barely
be seen down near the base of the graph.

Delete the straight line, and the two bell curves should appear if the
y-scale is set to "Auto". But the second bell curve will be incorrectly
using the first x-range, so edit that series so that it properly uses
the second x-range, and then you'll be there.

--
Del Cotter
NB Personal replies to this post will send email to ,
which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.

drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

Thanks Del.

you're spot-on.

"Deleting the straight line" revealed a bell curve. shape of this was not
the same as first nor second bell curves, so i'm assuming parameters got
mixed up.

can you give me a bit more instruction on "setting the y-scale to "Auto"
part?
i'm also not familiar w/ "editing the series for X & Y ranges".

also, am i suppose to use the "Custom Types" of chart instead of "Standard
Types" w/in the Chart Wizard? if so, which one do i choose, since i didn't
see "XY (Scatter)" under the "Custom Types" menu.


Delete the straight line, and the two bell curves should appear if the
y-scale is set to "Auto". But the second bell curve will be incorrectly
using the first x-range, so edit that series so that it properly uses
the second x-range, and then you'll be there.

--
Del Cotter

drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

On Tue, 15 May 2007, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
ChartsNewbie said:

Thanks Del.

you're spot-on.

"Deleting the straight line" revealed a bell curve. shape of this was not
the same as first nor second bell curves, so i'm assuming parameters got
mixed up.

can you give me a bit more instruction on "setting the y-scale to "Auto"
part?

You're all right, we know the scale is automatically resetting because
the curves sprang into view as soon as you deleted the big line that was
making your curves so flat that they were invisible down on the bottom
of the chart. My worry was that you might have set the Maximum of the y
scale, so that it stayed fixed, in which case deleting that straight
line would not have made the bell curves appear.

i'm also not familiar w/ "editing the series for X & Y ranges".

We'll deal with that in a little bit.

also, am i suppose to use the "Custom Types" of chart instead of "Standard
Types" w/in the Chart Wizard? if so, which one do i choose, since i didn't
see "XY (Scatter)" under the "Custom Types" menu.

XY (Scatter) is one of the standard types rather than a custom type, and
from your earlier post it sounds like you picked the right type (a very
common mistake is to choose "Line", which would be unsatisfactory for
this chart for a number of reasons).

I'm surprised to hear that neither of the shapes looks quite right to
you, as I'd hoped one of them would and the other one wouldn't. Let's
see if trying again works. After studying Tushar Mehta's tutorial...

http://www.tushar-mehta.com/
excel/charts/normal_distribution/#enumeration

....I think the best way to do this is not "editing series", which I
talked blithely about. I'm happy to do that by hand, but as you're a
charts newbie that's probably getting too deep for now. Instead, I'm
going to suggest using the "Add Data.." dialogue in the Charts menu.

After you followed the instructions the first time, you selected the
*whole* of the two columns B and C, and Excel detected just the cells it
needed to build the chart. I didn't even know it could do that, which is
why Tushar's a consultant and I'm just an amateur!

So build your second pair of columns that make up the second bell curve,
but instead of putting it right next to the first two to make a solid
block of B, C, D, and E, I want to put the second two columns at J and K
(that gives plenty of room to completely duplicate Tushar's original
scheme, still reading column A for the basic input, but using cells $N$1
and $P$1 for the mean and s.d., instead of $F$1 and $H$1).

When you've made the second pair of columns of data, instead of going to
the chart wizard to make a new chart (we've already got one) go to the
"Chart" menu up on the menu bar (if it's not there, make sure you have
the chart selected) and select Add Data...

When the dialogue box to pick a range appears, select the whole of
columns J and K just like you selected columns B and C before, and click
"OK". A dialogue box called Paste Special should then appear. The
defaults for this box should already be ideal for you, but just to
check, they should be like this

Add cells as: New Series
Values (Y) in: Columns
Series names in first row: YES
Categories (X values) in First column: YES
Replace existing categories: NO

When you click OK, your second bell curve should appear.

--
Del Cotter
NB Personal replies to this post will send email to ,
which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.

SOLVED drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

Del, thank you sooooo much. it worked perfectly.
your description was accurate and newbie-friendly. much appreciated.

i first did not find "Chart" button up on the menu-bar, and took me a while
to figure that out. but, once i got my "Chart" button appear on the
menu-bar, everything went according to your guide.

thank you very much for your timely help.

sam

SOLVED drawing bell graphs side-by-side
 

On Wed, 16 May 2007, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
ChartsNewbie said:

Del, thank you sooooo much. it worked perfectly.
your description was accurate and newbie-friendly. much appreciated.

You're welcome, and thank you for coming back to say so.

Something I forgot to mention is that the reason the XY chart type is
uniquely suited to this kind of application is that, almost alone of
chart types, it supports *multiple x-series*, one for each y-series.
Almost all other chart series (bubble chart is the exception) forces all
series of the same type to share the same x-axis.

--
Del Cotter
NB Personal replies to this post will send email to ,
which goes to a spam folder-- please send your email to del3 instead.