I *think* this was the point Greg was trying to make, the horizontal width of the bar implies to the user, since time is the y-axis, that there is a period of time related to the data collection which is important. When there really isn't, its just an artifact of how we are doing data bucketing.
Actually, the horizontal width of the bar is important because
provides boundaries for each timeslice, which have specific
start/end times relative to the overall time range being viewed.
This is a very accurate type of chart insofar as the mix/max/avg
markers are calculated with respect to the timeslice boundaries.
If you use a point or line graph, then this initial confusion maybe mitigated. The actual datapoints don't change, so people could still ask over what period do we calculate the average, but its perhaps not the first thing they think of.
Yes, this is what I thought the conclusion was in #rhq yesterday.
It didn't seem like we were talking about getting rid of bucketing
(and so any chart type would still need to deal with potential
jitters, or somehow make the buckets consistent). I agree that a
line chart is easier on the eyes, but don't believe that we are
fundamentally changing what we are charting (bucketed data); we're
just playing connect-the-dots (instead of bars/ticks) which, again,
I'm willing to concede may be a more intuitive solution (even if
it's not as accurate because it reduces data buckets [which have
real width] to single points [which have no width]).