From Wikipedia we learn that a choropleth is a “thematic map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed on the map, such as population density or per-capita income.” The Economist, July 5, 2014 at 23, shows a choropleth of…
When you create a plot, you may be content with the default text labels on the axes. You should, however, at least be aware of some choices you could make. To make this point real, let’s plot the 14 law firms that this year’s NLJ 350 reported as having more…
When they create a graphical plot, most people unthinkingly use the default axis linest. The axis lines on the typical scatter-plot or bar plot are the rectangle of lines around the plot data – the points or columns. Outside the axis lines are the tick marks, labels, text, and legends.…
Some scatterplots have so many data points close to each other that you can’t distinguish much from the cloudy mass where they cluster. That problem is known to data scientists as over-plotting. An example would be a plot that shows for a large law department the amounts of incoming invoices…
A Palo Alto startup, Ayasdi, builds software that uses the branch of mathematics known as topology. Topology concerns how shapes interact with space, and has application to portraying large collections of data. As described in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, January 28, 2013 at 34, Avasdi’s software can take huge amounts of data…
A network graph, when the term is used by mathematicians, means a structure comprised of nodes and edges. For example, a law department could represent the law firms it retained during the previous year by means of such a graph. The department would be the central node on the graph…