January 15, 2022
Overview # Venn diagrams are used to visually show commonalities between groups.
Usually, distinct groups are represented in Venn diagrams as circles or ellipses. Where these shapes overlap represent commonalities between groups.
Oftentimes, the different parts of a Venn diagram are labeled with the groups' defining features and with counts of the number of things that fall within each part of the Venn diagram.
So if there’s a circle for Group A, and another circle for Group B, and there’s some overlap of those two circles, where there is overlap represents individuals that are part of both Group A and Group B.
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January 12, 2022
Overview # A donut chart is more or less a pie chart.
Similar to a pie chart, a donut chart conveys a senses of relative proportions of different categories or groups.
Like a pie chart, a donut chart suffers from the same major flaw: its design makes it inherently difficult for people to visually draw clear comparisons between categories.
Data # Donut charts require a categorical field and a numerical field.
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January 9, 2022
Overview # Well, this is potentially a controversial one: pie charts.
A pie chart is a circular plot that is divided into wedges, where the wedges reflect categories, and the size of the wedge corresponds to the proportion of the categories.
The major criticism of pie charts is that humans do a very poor job of visually comparing angular wedges. The whole point of data visualization is to convey dense data clearly, and pie charts fail at that, especially if there are too many categories.
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January 3, 2022
Overview # A box and whisker plot (aka boxplot) is a way to show data distribution.
The dividing lines along the “box” part of box and whisker plot typically represent the median (the middle observation in a sequentially sorted dataset), the upper quartile (the observation that is the middle point of the upper half of the dataset), and the lower quarter (the observation that is the middle in the lower half of the dataset).
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December 23, 2021
Overview # Correlation refers to the tendency for different data fields (or variables) to move together.
Here’s a simple conceptual example: we typically expect that as a person’s height goes up (such as when the person ages and grows), that person’s weight would go up as well. In this case, we could say there is a strong positive correlation between height and weight.
If the fields move in the same direction (e.
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December 15, 2021
Overview # A histogram is a visualization that shows the spread of a numerical variable.
The way histograms are assembled is by taking a numerical variable, and chunking the data up into bins. Each bin reflects a count of the number of observations that fall within a range.
For example, if we have a super simple numerical variable made up of 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, and we define two bins, where one bin includes everything from 0 to 10, and the other bin containing everything everything above 10 to 20, then the bin from 0 to 10 includes 4 observations, and the bin from above 10 to 20 includes two observations.
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December 1, 2021
Overview # A stream graph is a variation of a stacked area chart. Stream graphs shows proportions of different categories along some other piece of sequenced data.
If you look at the data as vertical slices, the width of each section represents how much of something there is at each particular vertical slice.
You could call it a “stream plot” I suppose, but “stream graph” seems to be much more common.
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November 30, 2021
Overview # A beeswarm plot is a way to display the spread of a numerical data field. Think of it as a histogram, but rather than having heights of bars corresponding to the number of points within particular ranges, a beeswarm shows individual data points.
The data points in a beeswarm plot are spread out along a cross section to minimize point overlap so it’s visually easy to identify clusters of data points along a single continuous variable.
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November 29, 2021
Overview # A line plot (or line graph, whichever you prefer) is a way to show how something changes as something else changes.
Visually, a line plot connects point to point with lines. In many instances, the points themselves are not shown prominently, and the plot itself relies more on conveying data through the sequence of lines.
Line plots are frequently used to show how some value changes over time.
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November 9, 2021
Overview # A waffle plot is an excellent way to display proportions.
It can often be used in place of a pie chart. In fact, waffle charts are sometimes lovingly referred to as “square pie charts”.
One of the major advantages of waffle charts over pie charts is the absence of ambiguity.
Waffle charts are displayed in discrete blocks. Pie charts on the other hand are displayed in wedges, which can sometimes be difficult for the human eye to discern scale and proportions.
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