Remove Some Cases from a Plot

At times you want to see only a subset of the cases in a collection. For example, if you are exploring people's yearly incomes, you probably don't want to include children and retired people in your graph. You can remove cases from a plot in two ways: by selecting and hiding the cases, and by making a filter using a formula.

When you remove cases in these two ways, those cases not only disappear from the plot, they are also ignored in computing percents, computing averages, and drawing box plots. Removing cases is therefore different from changing a plot's axis so that you can't see some of the cases.

1.	Select the case icons you want to hide. To select a single case, click on it. To select multiple cases, you can either click in an empty part of the plot and drag a rectangle around them or hold down the Shift key while you click each icon.

2.	Choose Hide Selected Cases from the plot's Options menu.

You can repeat these steps as many times as you like, removing more and more cases from the plot. Also, you can choose Hide Unselected Cases from the plot's Options menu to hide the unselected cases.

1.	Choose Show Hidden Cases from the plot's Options menu.

With a filter, you remove cases from a plot by using a formula that tells TinkerPlots which cases you want to keep in the plot.

1.	Choose Add Filter from the plot's Options menu.

2.	In the formula editor, enter the expression you wish to use as a filter, then click OK.

In the formula editor, you'll generally want to type in an attribute name, a symbol such as = or <, and then an attribute value. For example, typing Height > 70 would keep in the plot only cases with values of Height more than 70. Typing Gender = "males" would keep only the males. (Note that you need to put category-attribute values in quotes.) (See Enter a Formula for more help.)

When a plot is being filtered, the formula of the filter appears below the plot.

1.	Double-click the formula located at the bottom of the plot.

2.	In the formula editor, edit the formula, then click OK.

1.	Choose Remove Filter from the plot's Options menu.

When a filter is removed, its formula is not erased. The next time you add the filter to the plot, the same formula will appear. You can toggle back and forth between the filtered and unfiltered state by pressing Ctrl+F (Win) Command+F (Mac).

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