Category: Visualization

Mike Cisneros explains what radar (or spider) charts are and how they work:

A spider chart, also sometimes called a radar chart, is often used when you want to display data across several unique dimensions. Although there are exceptions, these dimensions are usually quantitative, and usually range from zero to a maximum value. Each dimension’s range is normalized to one another, so that when we draw our spider chart, the length of a line from zero to a dimension’s maximum value will be the same for every dimension.

Spider charts can be found in lots of industries, but rarely in large numbers. In our experience, they’re most likely to pop up in food science (comparing products across multiple different facets of taste, texture, etc.) and in sports analytics (comparing athletes across several dimensions of performance). In one of our previous #SWDchallenges, several participants found other use cases for spider charts, such as comparing series on a time-cycle, comparing the volume of searches for different terms, or even visualizing the motifs in a piece of music.

My favorite use of the radar chart was in the Madden NFL series, where I spent far too much of my youth comparing attributes between prospects—for example, the quarterback radar chart might have throwing power, throwing accuracy, speed, strength, and awareness. Then, you compare the relative sizes and spikes of players to gauge who would be better. (Except that in the case of Madden, it was all a lie—turns out the radar charts weren’t actually based on anything, so as usual, a youth wasted).

More recently, Bruce Nolan came up with a radar chart to visualize quarterback play across a set of complementary measures:

Comments closed

Meagan Longoria improves a visual:

There are some easy opportunities to improve the readability of this chart, so I thought I would use it as an example of how small improvements can have a big impact on a fairly simple chart. I recreated the chart (as best I could) in Power BI and then made two revised versions.

Read on to see what Meagan did and get some advice on the subject.

Comments closed

Alex Velez shows off two powerful forms of dot plots:

Unfortunately, many graphing tools don’t include dot plots in their default charting options—including Excel, my preferred graphing tool. To build a dot plot in Excel, you need to get creative and format an existing chart to present as a dot plot. 

It sounds like some sort of wizardry, yet hopefully, this article will take the magic out of the process, enabling you to build dot plots and other custom creations.

Click through for a step-by-step walkthrough of how to create dot plots in Excel. Unfortunately, it’s not that much better in Power BI.

Comments closed

Alex Velez has a confession:

Spoiler alert: I made a bar chart that does not have a zero baseline. I should add that this was intentional and not for teaching purposes, but rather because it seemed like the more appropriate solution for my given scenario.

This is an interesting edge case, but honestly, I think a bar chart is the wrong choice for the job here. I definitely prefer a dot plot here, even if the one Alex put together was a bit noisy. I think the best answer might have been to have a vertically aligned dot plot, similar to the final bar chart except without the bars. That reduces a lot of the noise while letting you label the specific points.

As far as the topic, I defer to noted philosopher Ron Swanson: “There’s only one thing I hate more than lying: skim milk. Which is water that’s lying about being milk.”

Comments closed

Laura Ellis explains the benefits of pre-sketching data visualizations:

When you take on a new data visualization project, it can be tempting to jump in and create visualizations right away with the idea that after enough exploring, the final format will present itself to you. And while it is important to dedicate time to EDA (exploratory data analysis), it can also be very beneficial to define a high-level plan early in the process.

Over time, I’ve found that producing an early sketch has been helpful in reducing the total amount of time and iterations taken towards building the end product.

Read on for the reasons why.

Comments closed