Qlik Sense added a Distribution Plot visualization in the June 2017 release. QlikView does not have a specific chart type for distribution plot, but you can achieve the same with a scatter plot.
The trick is to set the Y value (Expression #2) to a constant value such as “1”. Here’s a distribution of Life Expectancy by Country (source: WHO 2017).
Dimension: Country X-Axis: =[Life Expectancy] Y-axis: =1
It works, but it’s difficult to understand how many points overlap. You can switch the Style to the outlined ball similar to Qlik Sense and that helps.
I find a more effective technique is to add some transparency into the color. Overlapped points will result in a darker color.
You can also highlight points using set analysis or alternate states.
Adding reference lines such as Quartiles can provide additional understanding.
To add a second dimension e.g. “Sex” (values: Male, Female, Both) replace the fixed Y-axis expression with an expression that generates an index number for the values.
=Dual(Sex, FieldIndex('Sex', Sex))
That will assign Y-values 1,2,3 to the Sex values. The Dual() will ensure the text value will show in the popup. The Y-axis will still display a numeric value so I’ve hidden the axis. That leaves us without labels for the three lines. We can either create labels using text-in-chart or use a color coding scheme.
Distribution plots can be oriented vertically by using a fixed X-axis. If you’ve used my ScriptRepository tool, you may recognize that the search results scroll-guide (the yellow dots) are a narrow scatter plot.
-Rob
Another good one from you.
Thanks Rob
Interesting stuff!
Hey Rob,
this is very interesting. However, i am struggling to rebuild this. Would you share the QVW – or a simple sample QVW with me ?
Thanks!
Philipp
Hi Philipp,
Here’s the QVW I built the examples from
http://qlikviewcookbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/QV-Distribution-Plot2.qvw