Creating bubble chart (tricks and tips)

Bubble chart

We can use a bubble chart instead of a scatter chart where there are three data series (X, Y , Z). Z determines size of the bubble.

(1) Select three data columns (X, Y and Z). 

You can specify different options before clicking finish.

Usually bubble size might look big. The overall size can scaled using scale bubble size to x % option. Click data series to format the data series. 

Two variation charts produced in Excel 2003. 3D format is more attractive in Excel 2013.

3D bubles look nice in Excel 2013.

The following a chart with 9 series (3 manually grouped using different Y values). Here Y value is not qualitative type of variable with three levels 1, 2, 3 (with three subgroups). X and Y are really quantitative variables. This type of information useful for plotting in genome. 

3D-bubble version in 2013 Excel

Buble plot for qualitative variables where third axis (buble size is only a quantative variable)

Even if Y is not quantative variable we can provide psedo -cordinates (consequitive numbers) so that we can plot bubble plot with two qualitative variables and third quantative variables. See the following example:

After removing the axis labels, moving labels to center manually, and adding grid lines with dotted line types the processed plot look like the following: