Common Question 27

Do all Subsets have to contain the same number of Points?

Yes, however, there are a couple of methods which you can use to handle subsets with varying quantities of points.

For one, you can use the Null-Data mechanism. Here you will pad any remaining/unused subset's data with values equal to the NullDataValue property. Note that x data has a NullDataValueX property. The default null data values are zero so padding is not necessary if the null data values are not changed. If zero is a valid data value, then change the null data value properties to say -999 and then pad all unused data with -999. For more information on null data, see NullDataValue and NullDataValueX.

Secondly, if you have some subsets with thousands of data points, and others with just a few (less than 100), then you can plot those smaller subsets as annotations rather than as subsets. GraphAnnotationType and the Graph Annotation mechanism can plot lines, points, and even bars (as rectangles). You can also add legends for these annotations with the properties LegendAnnotationType, LegendAnnotationText, and LegendAnnotationColor. For more information on annotations, look at Question 10.