The Data Visualisation Catalogue: find the right method for your data

(datavizcatalogue.com)

250 points | by sea-gold 14 hours ago ago

28 comments

  • roenxi 37 minutes ago ago

    I'd class this website as good if you want to make a visual impact, but giving subtly bad advice if you want to visualise data.

    Looking at the selection for proportions [0] there are things like circle packing or bubble maps presented as options. These are terrible ways to encode visual data if the intent is for the audience to actually take an interest in the data itself. Humans are really bad at interpreting the relative size of areas, especially circles. They really only make sense if the intent is to wow the audience that you have data and design skills, then everyone moves on without asking tough questions. Fair enough, sometimes that is the right thing to do, but it isn't a good way to visualise data. Use bars.

    [0] https://datavizcatalogue.com/search/proportions.html

  • tunesmith 5 hours ago ago

    I came across another one a while back I wish I had bookmarked, it was old style html just from a greybeard dataviz expert, and it was basically an exhaustive description of what to use in what situations, and it was chock full of advice that was both counterintuitive and obvious in hindsight... what was great about it is it focused on the data type first, and only recommended the viz styles at the end.

  • sarajevo 11 hours ago ago

    Ads were way too aggressive on iOS, pop up videos interfered with the use. I have a genuine interest in the topic but the ads just made my trust dissipate under a minute.

  • dataspun 13 hours ago ago

    Good potential, appreciate the organization of topics but not the ads and clickbait stuff.

    • rcpt 13 hours ago ago

      It'd be a better site as a single page listing all the charts types (like seaborn docs) but then you wouldn't have to click past two ads to see what a box-and-whisker plot looks like

      • ayhanfuat 13 hours ago ago

        A better version is here: https://datavizproject.com/

        • sizzle 7 hours ago ago

          One of my favorites, easy to navigate visually!

        • ChrisMarshallNY 12 hours ago ago

          Thanks for that!

          Much better!

        • motohagiography 12 hours ago ago

          i disagree that this is better because the OP is about why you would choose a given viz and what it actually expresses usefully, where this example is just pictures people can fit their data to for slides.

          direction matters. most sankey diagrams could be pie charts (eg the birthday sankey) and dumb usages discredit useful viz techniques.

          nested boxes are usually trees, and mixed nested boxes with lines without symmetry are almost always lazy reasoning or bullshit. start with symmetry and intent and it will be apparent.

          • NicuCalcea 11 hours ago ago

            Click the header menu buttons.

  • felipesabino 10 hours ago ago

    What would you recommend for a series of events over time, where events can also link to other events?

    Similar to a graph of nodes with a time component.

    I have been scratching my head around this visualization problem it has been some time, and still haven’t found anything that would be applicable

    • hotspot_one 6 hours ago ago

      Picture musical notation, 5 horizontal lines where the y-axis is the note (higher on the staff, higher note) and the x-axis is position in time.

      Say you have 5 event types, which occur with various frequencies over time. Plot them as dots on the staff.

      Draw lines between events which link to each other.

      If you draw the lines for the staff, they should be faint, only to help classify the event.

      And you can of course have more than 5 event types, just add more lines. Hopefully less than 20 lines, otherwise this starts to get visually very messy.

    • zub-twin 6 hours ago ago

      For print/static graphic? An Ishikawa diagram paired with a, probably keyed, network diagrams(s). For video or interactive there would be more flexibility. Your delivery method ultimately makes many choices for you.

    • thom 8 hours ago ago

      What decisions are to be made based on the data? What tasks are users working on?

    • nerdponx 8 hours ago ago

      Can you draw the graph and actually arrange the nodes on a timeline?

    • hammock 10 hours ago ago

      Sankey diagram? Can you give an example?

    • analog31 9 hours ago ago

      logic diagrams from electronics?

  • dkh215 11 hours ago ago

    Would love to see less ads on this.

  • sizzle 7 hours ago ago

    Not seeing an UpSet plot?