Re: Histogram "Bins" tab options problem

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <aguelzow pyrshep ca>]

On Tue, 2011-02-08 at 15:22 -0500, Daniel P. Dougherty wrote:
> Sorry if this starts to sound rant-ish  (it's really not).

We always like feedback. Even if we might disagree with it heartily.

> It might be cleaner to have a check box way back in the  "Graphs & Options" 
> tab to provide the option to the user to normalize the frequencies by bin 
> width rather than have the "Histogram chart" option forcibly (and silently) do 
> this.

The tool does not normalize frequencies at all. Having a "normalize
frequencies" option would imho mean that we should normalize the results
as shown by the tool on the sheet.

Histogram charts and column charts are distinct objects in Gnumeric. SO
that's why you need to choose which kind you would like. The former
causes the charting system to normalize. Perhaps we should add a note to
the histogram checkbox ("with normalized frequencies").

> At my first user experience of the "Histogram Chart" option was that it was 
> simply a "Column chart" with the Gap set to 0%.

That's a charting issue.

>   This intuition turned out to 
> be incorrect, but it's really what I thought as a first experience with that 
> feature and I imagine probably what most first-time users experience with that 
> feature.  So the "Histogram Chart" option not only looks different but 
> _behaves_ differently which sort of sneaks up on you as a user and takes some 
> time getting used to.

It's really not the "Histogram Chart option" but the "Histogram Chart"
that does that.
> Note: There is already a tick box in the  "Graphs & Options" to get a 
> cummulative view of the data so it seems appropriate to have a tick option to 
> yes/no normalize by bin width there as well.

I think this would confuse things even more. If we normalize the
frequencies on the sheet itself then we would have to disable the
histogram option since we can't create  a histogram chart object
anymore. 

>   Ok, yes the graphical histogram 
> chart option has this functionality too so you can turn the cummulative aspect 
> on/off without having to go back and redo but then it's only in the Histogram 
> Chart option -- not there in the column or bar chart types. Getting a 
> cummulative view is a nice feature -- but I think having the option to 
> normalize (also) needs to be back  at the  "Graphs & Options" as a tick box 
> for users that may want column chart type.  I imagine more users will know 
> ahead-of-time if they want a cummulative histogram and would expect that such 
> an option to come early in the work flow rather than as an option of the 
> graphical object at the very end of their work flow as an after-thought.

if you think that there are really more than 2 or 3 users who would want
a "normalize frequencies" option than please file an enhancement request
at bugzilla.gnome.org. Of course we would then need to move that ahead
of the cutoff/bin choices since many of the bin choices are not feasible
for normalized frequencies.

Andreas 


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