Plots and Sheets

There are two main ways to display your results in Ravel: Plots and Sheets .

There are two main ways to display your results in Ravel : Plots

Plots

Figure 55 shows the default Plot. It has ten inputs, though only one needs to be connected to populate a plot:

One input for data for each of the 2 Y-axes;
Two inputs for data for the X-axis, which are used to create X-Y plots, but are otherwise left blank; and
6 angled inputs which set the range of values for each of the 3 axes.

Figure 55: The Plot

Later versions of Ravel will add 3 more inputs: “Markers” for the Y and X axes. These will draw a dotted line on the plot at a specified value, which is useful when you want to compare a plot to a reference value (currently markers for the Y1 and X axis are controlled by drop-down menus on the Options form).

As with mathematical operators like add and multiply, the input ports on the two Y-axes can have multiple inputs, which allows multiple series to be plotted on one Plot. A Ravel which outputs multiple values—say, the rate of inflation in European countries—will also generate a multi-series plot.

The appearance of a Plot is controlled by two forms, one for Legends etc (Options), and the other for the colour and style of lines and bars (Pen Styles)—see Figure 56. Both are right-click menu choices.

Figure 56: Controls for the appearance of Plots

Figure 57 shows the use of several of these features:

The top two Plots have inputs on both Y axes, which enables the comparison of two data series over time;
They also have values (the dates 1970 and 2022) on the X-axis range inputs;
The middle plot has “No Change” as a horizontal marker;
Its y-axes ranges are determined by a set of parameters gt__l , gb__l and scalelr , which make it easy to align the scales on both axes; and
The bottom plot has an input on the X axis, which enables a scatter-plot comparison of change in household credit with change in house prices.

Figure 57: Wiring canvas showing use of the different Plot input ports

Figure 58 shows the same plots on a publication tab. The settings on the Ravel can be altered— say, moving the country selector from the USA to Japan, or changing the date range—which in turn alters what the plots display.

Figure 58: Ravel Publication Tab with several plots

There will be many improvements to Plots in the near future . We have focused on the core aspects of Ravel in its pre-release development; now that we are ready to release Ravel commercially, the “bells and whistles” are receiving attention.

Sheets

Figure 59 shows the default sheet. It is big enough to display a couple of rows of data, but it can be resized using its corner arrows to show a larger amount of data.

Figure 59: The default Sheet

At present, sheets can only take one input (unlike Plots), which restricts them to showing only the contents of one Ravel or variable, as with Figure 60—but there is a sophisticated workaround to this, as explained below.

The main control over the appearance of a Sheet is the “Row Slices” command, which determines whether a Sheet displays the first entries in a variable, the last, or a mix of the two.

Figure 60: The default sheet expanded and with a variable attached

Given the limited controls over a Sheet at present, it’s best to attach a Ravel to control what a Sheet displays (in a future release, Sheets and Plots will be integrated into Ravels, making this a one-step process).

Figure 61: A sheet on a Publication Tab with a linked Ravel attached and the Tail of the row data displayed

To display the contents of more than one variable on a Sheet, use the Merge command. This Ravel-specific widget takes in two or more variables which share dimensions, and adds a new axis to the resulting variable (or Ravel) with the two (or more) variables as entries on that axis. In Figure 62, the two variables ∆ HPI__% and ∆ CreditHH__%GDP , which share the dimensions Date and Country, are melded into a new axis called Variables. These two data series can now be displayed in the one Sheet.

Figure 62: Merging two variables to create a new Ravel with an extra dimension "Variables", set in the Edit menu for

Merge