Power BI – How to Create a Scatter Chart?

A Scatter chart is a chart, representing data points, spread on a graph, to show the column values. It helps us analyze and summarise the data very efficiently. We can also add legends, bubble sizes, and animations to this chart. This graph is widely used because it can show better visualizations in the case of both categorical as well as numeric data. In this article, we will learn how to create a scatter chart in Power BI. 

Creating a Scatter Chart In Power BI 

A Scatter chart has multiple options while creating, and customizing it. We will take a look at each of the options. For example, we are given a data set of Employees, and we want to make a scatter chart, consisting of legends, bubble size, and animation. We will explore each option while creating this scatter chart.

Step 1: The dataset comprises 5 columns i.e. Department, Employee Id, Employee Name, Salary, and Year. 

Step 2: Under the Visualizations section, click on the Scatter chart. 

Step 3: An empty scatter chart is created. This scatter chart does not contain any columns. Our next task is to add columns to it. 

Step 4: Adding X-Axis in the Scatter chart. Drag and drop Employee Name into the X-Axis. We can see that the scatter chart has allotted the name of the employees. The column added here is a string, and not a numeric value, hence does not shows any aggregate functions like sum, count, max, min, etc. 

Step 5: Adding Y-Axis in the Scatter chart. Drag and drop the Sum of Salary into the Y-Axis. We can see that the scatter chart has allotted the sum of Salary on its y-axis. For example, Arushi has a salary of 50K, and Gautam has a salary of 40K, etc. Salary is numeric data, hence, we could use aggregate functions like sum, average, count, etc. 

Step 6: Legends, help sub-categorize the data. It is preferred to use legends, on categorical data. Drag and drop Department, under the Legend section. We can see in the image, that, each department, gets its own color. For example, the IT department got a purple color, and hence the Salary of Arushi and Gautam is shown in purple.

Step 7: Size defines the size of each data point, on a specific measure. Drag and drop Salary, under the size section. We can see that size of the bubble has changed for each data point. Higher the salary, the larger the size of the bubble. For example, the data point size of Radha is greater than Alia. 

Step 8: Our next task, is to add Tooltips in the Scatter chart. Tooltips provide additional information that we want to see, whenever we hover at a data point. In the below image, we can see that, we have hovered at, Radha’s salary, and then we can view multiple pieces of information i.e. Department, Employee Name, and salary. All this data appeared, as we have added, these measures previously. Now, think what if we want to add Employee Id to this list? 

Step 9: Drag and Drop Employee Id under Tooltips. Now, again hovering at Radha’s salary, we can see that Employee Id has been added to the list. 

Step 10: Now, our last task is to add a Play Axis in this Scatter chart. The play axis shows a series of transformations of data over a period of time. The Play Axis is generally used with Dates. Drag and Drop Year into the Play Axis. Now, you might be wondering, why an error came, into the scatter chart, and the Play Axis has not been displayed. 

Step 11: This is a general error. The reason, for this error, is that we can only use, numeric data in our X-Axis and Y-Axis to make Play Axis work. As mentioned in Step4, Employee Name is a string, and not, numeric data. To resolve this error, we can simply remove Employee Name from our X-Axis and can add Employee Id to it.  

Step 12: We can see in the below image, we have successfully created a Play Axis.