What does the Ordinal Scale Type visualization setting do?

Knowledge Drop

Last tested; Jan 13, 2021
 

The short explanation is that with Ordinal Scale Type setting, data is plotted along the x-axis as evenly-spaced, discrete entries, regardless of relative distance between data points. (https://docs.looker.com/exploring-data/visualizing-query-results/column-options#scale_type)The longer explanation:

Let’s say you have a dataset like the following, where you have a gap in data from December 26th to December 27th (December 25th has data as shown in the data table, it looks empty here because it is a small number for the scale of this visualization).

tyr9XbT31AKhiKhYEBV97h503ELEY7b_5S6QrEBIbNm3gLAFTtQce3P-xc4Qm3WuXBjt0dXbbxtXobRDE93aPQdbPU_vDyZQpkk4yYtFs2qn0RaDyPu4Io7NnN68hvUS27BrTUrS


If you would like to show your data over the full timeframe that the data was collected, you can use the “Automatic based on Data” Scale Type (as shown above), or the “Time” Scale Type. However, if you do not want to show this gap, the Ordinal Scale Type will only plot the data from the data table.

DciysEnj7iuaxw9bG3-BpBuRNYGK92jNLR_zsqfDqqiszSaAjc1sxK2s7Mgu5Ze2q85FnCjqBZNiH7Mgcf0MuicmlrKmQIO1t9j9uU5_uGdNlOmO-VPhqphWB7HZ0FR_2uPRsD6e

This content is subject to limited support.                

Version history
Last update:
‎07-07-2021 12:26 PM
Updated by: