2.4 The Basic Plot Types

Although this chapter will also cover some more advanced plot types, the examples demonstrated here will primarily consist of scatter plots, line plots, bar plots, histograms, and box plots.  

If you comb through the financial pages of any major newspaper, on any given day, you are certain to see data visualizations.  In fact, a single daily edition of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times contains dozens of them.  Nearly all of these graphs are among the five types mentioned in the paragraph above.

What’s so good about basic plots?  They are effective for communicating information to an audience.  Simply put, they get the job done.  Whether it’s a line plot that compares retail sales indices across the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Eurozone, or it’s a bar plot showing various manufacturers’ percentage changes in vehicle sales, year over year, they offer a visual companion to the textual information in a story.  

At times, more sophisticated plots will serve a valuable purpose, especially when they accomplish something that a simpler plot could not convey.  However, always bear in mind that the more complicated any data visualization becomes, the harder it will be for an audience to grasp its meaning.