Scalar line charts need more precision on axis labels, tooltip

If TensorBoard loads a scalar chat with values (Wall time,Step,Value)

1579727534.794,64000,5.544368743896484
1579727944.389,126000,5.545065402984619
1579728140.318,166000,5.545552730560303
1579728495.964,222000,5.545528411865234

The values will be labeled on the y-axis as ‘5.55’. This lack of precision can be highly misleading. TB should be showing more significant digits when necessary, or perhaps at least an ellipsis ‘…’.

Similarly, the precise “Value” column in the hover-tooltip shows ‘5.55’. This means the only reliable way to get the precise values is by downloading the data as CSV or JSON.

[Randl]

This also happens in case the values themselves are relatively large: One possible fix is to calculate tickstep and choose precision of formatter to be at least ceil(log(maximal value/tickstep)).

[psybuzz]

Thanks for taking a look, no worries if it didn’t work. In my opinion, fixing the line chart rendering still seems like the proper way to address this. It would be ideal if misleading information wasn’t shown in the default state.

Downloading a line chart’s CSV/JSON data or a PNG is actually already possible today! The “Show data download links” checkbox in the top left enables controls on each card to allow this.