ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Analysis > Charts > An introduction to charts

An introduction to charts

Introduction

Charts show a plot of some value across time. For example, the chart in figure 1, below, shows a plot of the animal's speed in a water-maze test.

Figure 1. An example of a chart - in this case, the chart is plotting the speed of the animal in a water-maze test.

Charts can be displayed both post-test and also live (i.e. during a test), which provides a great way to get visual feedback of the magnitude of some measure that interests you.

Setting up a chart is extremely simple - you just add it to your protocol, give it a name, and select the value you want it to show. You can, of course, choose to specify things like the x-axis width, the trace colour, etc. but these will be set to default values, so you only need to set them if you want to.

Live charts

Plotting a chart during a test is a great way to get visual feedback of some value, as can be seen in the example in figure 1. But that chart shows just 30 seconds of data; what about a chart of a test that lasts for hours, or even days?

When you create a chart, you can specify the width of the x-axis - this defaults to the duration of the test, but you can select any period you want, for example 1 minute. During the test, when the trace reaches the right-hand edge, the chart begins to scroll automatically - thus you can always see the most recent 1 minute (or whatever width the x-axis has). In fact, you can adjust the x-axis width dynamically (so you could increase the width from 1 minute to 5 minutes, or even 12 hours, if you wanted to) and you can drag the chart so you can see the data that has scrolled off the left-hand side. These actions can be performed using the mouse, in a simple and intuitive way.

Multiple charts

You're not limited to charting a single value; you can in fact chart any number of different values simultaneously. The charts are simply stacked, but they all share the same x-axis and they all scroll together - see figure 2 for an example.

Figure 2. You can plot multiple values - each one is shown in a different chart, although all the charts share the same x-axis.

Because the x-axis of all the charts is the same, it makes it very easy to see dependencies in the values being plotted.

State channels

In addition to plotting a value, a chart also be set up to shade its background to show certain 'states'. For example, in a chart showing the animal's speed, you could add a state channel to indicate whether or not the animal is in a particular zone. This way, you'll have a visual indication as to whether there is any correlation between the animal's speed and its presence in the zone. For more details on this, see Setting up chart state channels.

Figure 3. A chart with two state channels: a green background indicates when the animal was in the 'Centre' zone, and a blue background indicates when it was immobile.

Viewing charts post-test

After tests are complete, you can view their charts by going to the Test details report. Selecting the Related reports button in the ribbon bar will allow you to select Test charts from a list.

You can include different charts post-test to those that are shown during the test - for example, you might choose to have just one important value plotted during tests, but post-test, you might like to be able to view the plots of five different values.

As with almost everything in ANY-maze, you can alter the charts after tests have been performed - so you can chart a value that wasn't set to be plotted when you performed the test, and you can alter the characteristics of charts such as their axis and trace colours.

Outputting charts

Charts can be copied to the clipboard or saved to files and, in the case of the Test charts report, printed as well.

When you copy or save charts that show multiple values, like those in figure 2, you have the choice of copying or saving just one specific chart or all the charts in the set.