Nov 17, 2015 - doughnut chart. Group A. Group B categorical conditional doughnut chart. Two Things At A Time. Continuous by Continuous continuous contin.
How to Choose a Chart Andy Grogan-Kaylor 2015-11-17
How to Choose a Chart Choosing the right chart to represent your data can be a daunting process. I believe that a starting point for this thinking is some basic statistical thinking about the type of variables that you have. At the broadest level, variables may be conceptualized as categorical variables, or continuous variables. • categorical variables represent unordered categories like gender, or religious affiliation. • continuous variables represent a continuous scale like a mental health scale, or a measure of neighborhood quality.
One Thing At A Time
Two Things At A Time
Continuous
Continuous by Categorical
histogram
conditional histogram count
count
Group A
50 0
100 50 0
0
100
200
300
0
100 200 300
0
100 200 300
continuous
continuous
boxplot
conditional boxplot
300
continuous
continuous
Group B
100
200 100
300 200 100 Group A
Group B
categorical
density
conditional density Group A
0.009
density
density
0.012
0.006 0.003 0.000
Group B
0.015 0.010 0.005 0.000
100
200
300
100 200 300
continuous
100 200 300
continuous 1
mean of continuous
mean of continuous
barchart of mean 200 150 100 50 0
200 150 100 50 0
Group A
Group B
categorical
violin plot
conditional violin plot Group A
300
continuous
continuous
conditional barchart of means
200 100
Group B
300 200 100
categorical
dotplot
conditional dotplot Group A
0.75
density
density
1.00 0.50 0.25 0.00 100
200
300
100 200 300
continuous One Thing At A Time
Group B
1.00 0.75 0.50 0.25 0.00 100 200 300
continuous Two Things At A Time
Categorical
Categorical by Categorical
bar chart
conditional bar chart Group B
count
count
Group A
categorical
categorical
2
conditional horizontal bar chart Group A
categorical
categorical
horizontal bar chart
Group B
count
pie chart
count
conditional pie chart Group A
Group B
categorical
categorical
doughnut chart
conditional doughnut chart Group A
categorical
Group B
categorical
Two Things At A Time Continuous by Continuous
scatterplot with fit line continuous
continuous
scatterplot
continuous
continuous
3
smoother count 25 20 15 10 5
continuous
continuous
hexagon plot
continuous
continuous
contour plot continuous
continuous
area plot
continuous
continuous
Graphics made with the ggplot2 graphing library created by Hadley Wickham. Available online at https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/agrogan/data-visualization
How to Choose a Chart by Andrew Grogan-Kaylor is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 4.0 International License. Last updated:
