CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powerbi
Khris
Khris

Reputation: 3212

Scatter plot columns without aggregation in Power BI Desktop

After reading this thread on the official forums I still didn't see how to plot columns without aggregation, and that thread did not offer any working solution.

Is there a way in MS Power BI Desktop to simply plot one or more columns without any aggregation?

Imagine I just have a simple table, imported from csv, that has numerical values in two columns, and I want to plot those individual values in a scatter plot, which is one of the most elementary tasks possible and is simply done e.g. in Excel.

Is this not possible in Power BI Desktop?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 6928

Answers (1)

Jeroen
Jeroen

Reputation: 63729

To my surprise, this was certainly not trivial...

The only solution / workaround I found so far feels hacky, and probably doesn't scale up for too many datapoints. But here it is nonetheless.

For simple, small, whole-number datasets...

Suppose this dataset:

X;Y
1;2
1;2
1;4
3;4
4;1
1;2
4;1
2;1

Import that CSV and add a calculated column:

Label = "(" & [X] & ";" & [Y] & ")"

Now create the scatter plot with:

  • Legend set to Label
  • X Axis set to Average of X
  • Y Axis set to Average of Y

And you'll get this:

scatter plot for the above

Not optimal, but at least it's a start for smaller datasets.

For simple, small, fractional number datasets...

The same process as above, and it'll look like this:

fractional datasets

The legend is starting to break down and is probably best removed.

For larger datasets...

Suppose you have an Excel sheet with two columns X and Y, both with the formula =RAND() * 5. Copy paste this row to e.g. 500 rows, so you have many data points.

Load it up in PowerBI. Add the Label column like above. Add a scatter plot and drag Label to Details, and set X and Y to their respective axis. Here's the result:

larger plot

It works pretty decently, I guess.

Upvotes: 5

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