How to graph quantitative and qualitative improvement in human health related measures? I'm creating an app that logs daily data from my users.
Data includes:


*

*waist circumference, weight (Quantitative data) 

*certain conditions like psoriasis, migraines, fatigue (Qualitative data rated from 1 to 5). 


Showing charts for each entitiy is fairly easy. 


*

*How can I take both data and show an overall improvement graph/chart based on each day? 

*Which type of graph/chart will work in this situation?


I'll be using google charts to visualize my data (i.e., see this this gallery of Google Charts).
 A: You'll probably want to use something like a "Line Chart" with Google Charts, which conveys trends over time. The most direct way, in my mind, is to develop some sort of composite score. Something like "Wellness".
How I'd do this is to let each of your participants set a weight for each factor (how much they care about it), and then present a weighted average of their % change in each factor. If you don't want to deal with that much personalization, you could set the weights a priori. 
This would probably work fine for individual data visualization, "Track Your Progress" type applications. You'd want something more sophisticated if you're intending to use it in a full blown study.
A: This is an interactive visualization of how world health and wealth data has changed over time. Something like this would be a great way to visualize human health improvements.
http://labs.infragistics.com/motion-framework/world-stats/
This is a Silverlight application built using data visualization controls from Infragistics (www.infragistics.com)
Disclaimer: I am a Technical Evangelist for Infragistics
