Selasa, 07 September 2010

Choose The Appropriete Chart Type for your Data.

Selecting the Right Chart Type for your Data

Selecting the Right Chart Type for your Data






The world today has way too much data, but very little information. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to convert your data into powerful information by selecting the right charts for expressing them.
Unless you are a data-analyst or a statistician, you will probably be using two commonly used types of data analysis: Comparison and Composition.
Comparison of data is the most common and easy to understand type of data analysis. And that makes it the perfect starting point. So let us dive in.

Comparison of data

Consider the following cases:
  • You want to compare the Quarterly Revenues of a product company over a period of 4 years.
  • You want to compare the total visitors of ten competing websites for the month of May.
  • You want to visualize the population trends of a country over a period of 170 years.
All these are examples of comparison of data. Let us now see how we go about deciding which chart to use for which situation.

1) Comparing Quarterly Sales over 4 years

We make a note of the following points:
  • The Revenue (in dollars) will be shown along one axis.
  • The time (quarter number) will be plotted along another axis.
  • There are four categories: Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4.
  • Each category will have 4 columns for years 2006 through 2009.
Since the number of categories is quite small (less than 5) a column chart will be apt for this case.
2D Column Chart
In each set of columns we have used a progressively darker shade of the same color; blue in this case. The progression of shades makes the sequence (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) apparent. Using shades of a single basic color shows that all of them belong to the same data type.

2) Comparison of total visitors to 10 competing websites

We make notes again:
  • The names (URLs, which are pretty long) of websites appear on one axis.
  • The number of visitors appear on another axis.
  • The number of categories is 10 (the number of websites).
We will choose a bar chart for this scenario because:
  • A bar chart is suitable when the number of categories is higher than 8 and lower than 15.
  • Bar charts give you more space for long text (since the screens are wider than they are high)
Bar Chart for showing visitors to 10 competing websites
The data sets have been arranged in descending order. This makes comprehension of data much easier as your eyes follow a decreasing pattern. With the pattern, they can connect shape to value much quicker.

3) Population trend of a country over a period of 10 years.

Notes, yet again:
  • Time (years) will be plotted along the X- axis (people are used to seeing time on X-axis. Physics guys nod your heads here).
  • The Total Population will be plotted along the Y-axis.
  • The number of categories/data points is very high (much more than 20).
We will choose a line chart for this plot because:
  • The number of data points is very high and a column or bar chart will look pretty cluttered.
  • Our aim for this chart is not to show the maximum or the minimum population. We are trying to show the trend, that is the rate of change of population (steepness of the line) rather than the population itself. A line chart is best suited for showing trend-based visualization.
Line Chart - Showing Population Trend of a country
This chart easily shows Abracadabra’s population growth to be almost parabolic with occasional negative spikes indicating catastrophes such as famines, etc.
Abracadabra is a good fictitious name to use when you can’t think of anything better.
So far, we have talked about data visualization for comparison of data. Next, we come to charts that depict composition of data.

Composition of data

Consider the following cases:
  • You want to plot the break-up of traffic sources to your website.
  • You want to plot the break-up of the visitors to your site by the duration they stayed on your site, in turn broken down on a day-wise basis.
All these are examples of composition data plots. Charts that are ideal for this kind of data are Pie/Doughnut charts, Stacked Charts, Multi-level pie charts etc. So let’s take this case-by-case and see which chart will be the best for each case.

1) Break-up of the visitors to your site based on traffic source

  • There will be 4 categories: Direct Traffic, Search Engines, Referring Sites and Others
  • We will plot the values in %, as we are interested in a comparative study more than the exact values.
The pie chart is a good fit given the conditions above, as we need to visualize the part to whole relationship of the traffic sources.
Pie Chart - Breakup of traffic by traffic sources
The use of pie charts is pretty debatable. So do NOT use a pie chart:
  • If you have more than 6 categories, unless there is this one clear winner that you want to focus on.
  • If two or more categories have almost the same values.
  • To sum up a couple or more categories and then compare them to another sum.
The pie and the doughnut chart are inter-changeable, and the choice mostly depends on your (or your client’s) taste.

2) Break-up of the visitors to your site depending on the duration of stay

  • The number of visitors will be broken down as per the time they spend on the website.
  • We also need to compare the above statistics depending on the day of the week. So the number of visitors by duration will in turn be broken down by the day of the week
  • The total number of visitors to the site on every day also has to be displayed.
We will use a stacked column chart for our purposes because:
  • It can show the break-up of visits by duration and show the whole using the same data plot.
  • The number of categories is small – five, or seven if you want to consider weekends as well.
Stacked Column Chart - Breakup of visitors by time spent
The stacked area chart could have been considered. But it is better suited when you want to see the trend of composition, rather than being concerned with the exact quantitative values.
So we have talked about Comparison and Composition of data. There is also another type of data analysis that combines the merits and functionality of both Comparison and Composition into one.

Distribution of data

Consider the following cases:
  • You want to plot the variation of relative humidity with temperature.
  • You want to plot the variation of rainfall with temperature.
In both these situations there are two parameters where one depends on another. In the first case for every temperature value (in centigrade) there will be a corresponding value of relative humidity. The data set includes a set of such pairs of values (temperature, RH). This is ideal for the use of a Scatter chart.
Scatter Chart - Relative Humidity v Temperature
Similarly we will use a Scatter chart to represent the variation of rainfall with temperature.
Scatter Chart - Rainfall vs Temperature
Thus, a scatter chart is used when:
  • There are a large number of discrete data points.
  • There are two variables that are inter-dependent.
  • If there are two or more sets of data (multi-series scatter) and you want to show similarity in their variations with respect to a single parameter. The common parameter is usually plotted along the horizontal axis.
We have reached the last leg of our article where we will talk about a chart where every point has-not two-but three associated parameters. Thus, it shows the inter-relationship between three variables. In the previous example, if you wanted to plot both the relative humidity and the rainfall of a place against the temperature, you can use the Bubble chart.
Bubble Chart
The chart has temperature along the horizontal axis and relative humidity along the vertical axis. The location of the circles therefore shows the variation of RH with temperature. The radius of each circle or bubble represents the amount of rainfall for a particular set of {Temperature, RH}.

The End. Or is it?

It is pretty difficult to have a guideline for all types of charts that soak in all kinds of data. For that a book will not be enough, let alone a tutorial. However, I have tried to cover the basic data representations and how to classify them as one of the three types viz, Comparison, Composition and Distribution.
The best way to select the right chart for your data is to ask yourself what you intend to analyze. Is it finding out a pattern? Is it seeing the break-up of one-complete-whole-something? Once you have your answer, your data analysis can be categorized into one of the 3 methods we just discussed. Then go ahead and plot the chart you think is the most suitable (with the help of the pointers given in the tutorial). If you are able to analyze whatever data you set out to, there you have it. If you could not, try out the other charting variations possible in that category. Sooner or later, you will strike gold.
Even though time consuming to start with, it is a very methodical approach. Once you master the art of selecting the right chart, it will serve you forever, placing powerful actionable information in your hands.
This post was written with the help of @hatfullofrain

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