Oddness on the Google AnnotatedTimeLine

GoogleVisualization.jpg

Well, I got one thing figured out - the bottom 'graph' on the Google AnnotatedTimeLine is a graph of what? Well... it appears that it's a graph of the final column in the dataset. Odd, but I guess that's one way to look at it. I might have liked it to be the first, but that's only because I have the total in the first column (after the date/time). Interesting.

I suppose that now I could move the total to the last column, but that would take a bit of effort, and based on the discussion I started on the Google Groups, it looks like I'm not the only one that's interested in this being a little more flexible. Here's to hoping that they respond with some flexibility in this.

[4/16] UPDATE: the last message in this thread was from VizGuy at Google:

  1. Its the last data series.
  2. Its a logarithmic manipulation of this data.
  3. We have an open feature request to let the users control this data.
  4. For now, you can hide this part of the chart (displayRangeSelector:
    false). I know its not perfect, but for those who get crazy, it might be
    better than leaving it as is... 🙂

From this, it's clear that I'm not alone in my confusion and the solution wasn't at all clear. Saying it's a logarithmic manipulation of the last column is really not at all clear. But it's on their list of things to do, and that's going to have to be enough. If I really wanted it to mean something, I'd move the totals data to the last column.