How to create a connected scatter plot

Connected scatter plots are often used when comparing two data series that have different units of measure. They can also serve as an alternative to dual axis charts. 

On a typical line chart, the vertical axis represents quantitative data, while the horizontal axis represents time. A connected scatterplot, however, shows values regardless of time on both the vertical and horizontal axes. 

Read how you can create your own connected scatter plot below.

1
Create a basic scatter plot using one of our starting points.
2
Head to the Data tab and upload your data.
3
The scatter plot usually requires a long data format, as opposed to wide. However, in the example above, we use wide data to bind the two columns ( Dwellings and Population) under the X and Y axis settings in the Data tab.

Year Dwellings Population
1971 364,480
55928000
1972 330,930 56096700
1973 304,630 56222900
1974 279,630 56235600
1975 321,940 56225700
4
If you are also planning to use wide data, you may need to add an additional column to bind under the Series/connect with line column binding. This setting groups dots into series  based on the contents of a column. 

If you only need one line (like in the example above), make sure that each data entry has the exact same content in the Series column. If you need two or more lines, use long data format and add multiple categories in the Series column. 

5
If you want to use date/time data for labels, you can bind the relevant column under Name.

WARNING: The Name column binding only supports Text data type. This may create an issue when using date/time format for the label, but you can easily change your column data format – read how to do this here.

6
Display the labels by heading to the Dot labels > Show labels on points setting in the Preview tab. If labels overlap too much, you can choose which one should be visible by choosing the Selective (story only) option – read more about this here.

7
That's it! Read more about connected scatter plots in our blog post.

TIP: Connected scatter plots may be hard to read by the regular viewer. We recommend adding annotations to simplify the chart-reading process. You can also consider a logarithmic scale where appropriate.

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