Choosing an attractive linear scale for a graph's Y Axis

Question

I\'m writing a bit of code to display a bar (or line) graph in our software. Everything\'s going fine. The thing that\'s got me stumped is labeling the Y axis.

The

Answer 1

For anyone who need this in ES5 Javascript, been wrestling a bit, but here it is:

var min=52;
var max=173;
var actualHeight=500; // 500 pixels high graph

var tickCount =Math.round(actualHeight/100); 
// we want lines about every 100 pixels.

if(tickCount <3) tickCount =3; 
var range=Math.abs(max-min);
var unroundedTickSize = range/(tickCount-1);
var x = Math.ceil(Math.log10(unroundedTickSize)-1);
var pow10x = Math.pow(10, x);
var roundedTickRange = Math.ceil(unroundedTickSize / pow10x) * pow10x;
var min_rounded=roundedTickRange * Math.floor(min/roundedTickRange);
var max_rounded= roundedTickRange * Math.ceil(max/roundedTickRange);
var nr=tickCount;
var str="";
for(var x=min_rounded;x<=max_rounded;x+=roundedTickRange)
{
    str+=x+", ";
}
console.log("nice Y axis "+str);    

Based on the excellent answer by Toon Krijtje.