Types of Charts
These lecture note slides walk through various charting options at your disposal. The slide collection also includes some working examples to show how one dataset can be visualized with many different charts. Take note of which charts are associated with each data type. Some are quite creative.
Conventional visualizations
Scatter plot, Line graph & Bar graph
Scatter plot
- Relationship between observations on two continuous dimensions
- Can show multiple groups
- Can show trend lines etc.
- Uninformative with too much data
Line graph
- Also ubiquitous!
- Good for showing one variable (e.g., time) as continuous even though you have discrete measures
- Can compare several discrete groups
Bar graph
- aka "dynamite plot"
- Ubiquitous!
- Can be used for lots of discrete grouping factors
- Natural semantics of grouping
- Conceals data
More bar graphs
