Re: Trying to get chart from table working

[Peter Davis <pfd@pfdstudio.com>]

I'm sorry to belabor this, but I could use some help. I'd be willing to
pay a modest consulting fee, but I'm trying to solve a problem in a
timely way, as it would help me with healthcare decisions.

Basically, I want to plot a time series graph showing my PSA (prostate
specific antigen) over time. The PSA is measured at irregular intervals,
and has been for over 4 years (and hopefully will continue for many more
years.) That should be a simple enough graph. I've already got a
javascript d3 example that does this, but I'd like to embed it in a
document, and to be able to generate PDF.

Further, I want to be able to show different time intervals with tinted
bands spanning the full range of the graph, and having specific start
and end dates. These would represent various medical treatments I've
undergone. I have a rough example I've mocked up in Photoshop, but, of
course, I want to be able to add new data and re-generate the chart as
needed. I don't know if I can attach a PNG to an email on this list.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough emacs lisp knowledge, or org-mode
knowledge, or gnuplot knowledge to know how to make this all work. I
have not even be able to get the org-plot example to work. (I have been
using org for various types of documents for a number of years, and can
generally pick things up quickly, but I'm overwhelmed by this.)

I was thinking of having a table like:

----
...
| *Date* | *PSA* | *Treatment* |
| 2017-08-11 | 185 | |
| 2017-08-21 | | #ffdd99 |
| 2017-09-19 | 854 | #ffdd99 |
...
----

So some rows would contain a PSA measurement, some a background tint,
and some both. I've never seen a visualization like this, but I think it
would be very helpful to have a single timeline that shows periods of
various treatments and the PSA value. There are probably better ways to
specify the starting and ending dates of treatments, but this seemed
amenable to simple iterative processing.

I've considered possible tools for this, including d3, PostScript, etc.,
but I think Org would be best for maintainability, allowing me to add
notes, etc.

I know this is a tall order, but it's beyond my capabilities right now.
Any recommendations or suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
-pd

-- 
  Peter Davis
  www.techcurmudgeon.com