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

Based on @Gamecat's algorithm, I produced the following helper class

public struct Interval
{
    public readonly double Min, Max, TickRange;

    public static Interval Find(double min, double max, int tickCount, double padding = 0.05)
    {
        double range = max - min;
        max += range*padding;
        min -= range*padding;

        var attempts = new List();
        for (int i = tickCount; i > tickCount / 2; --i)
            attempts.Add(new Interval(min, max, i));

        return attempts.MinBy(a => a.Max - a.Min);
    }

    private Interval(double min, double max, int tickCount)
    {
        var candidates = (min <= 0 && max >= 0 && tickCount <= 8) ? new[] {2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 7.5, 10} : new[] {2, 2.5, 5, 10};

        double unroundedTickSize = (max - min) / (tickCount - 1);
        double x = Math.Ceiling(Math.Log10(unroundedTickSize) - 1);
        double pow10X = Math.Pow(10, x);
        TickRange = RoundUp(unroundedTickSize/pow10X, candidates) * pow10X;
        Min = TickRange * Math.Floor(min / TickRange);
        Max = TickRange * Math.Ceiling(max / TickRange);
    }

    // 1 < scaled <= 10
    private static double RoundUp(double scaled, IEnumerable candidates)
    {
        return candidates.First(candidate => scaled <= candidate);
    }
}