Tutorials

Filled contour plots are useful for looking at density across two dimensions and are often used to visualize geographic data. It's straightforward to make them in R — once you get your data in the right format, that is.

Color can drastically change how a chart reads and what you see in your data, so don't leave it up to chance with defaults.

When you have several time series over many categories, it can be useful to show them separately rather than put it all in one graph. This is one way to do it interactively with categorical filters.

There are various ways to visualize connections, but one of the most intuitive and straightforward ways is to actually connect entities or objects with lines. And when it comes to geographic connections, great circles are a nice way to do this.

Ever since Hans Rosling presented a motion chart to tell his story of the wealth and health of nations, there has been an affinity for proportional bubbles on an x-y axis. This tutorial is for the static version of the motion chart: the bubble chart.

The goal of Chernoff faces is to show a bunch of variables at once via facial features like lips, eyes, and nose size. Most of the time there are better solutions, but the faces can be interesting to work with.

Oftentimes, you'll want to fit a line to a bunch of data points. This tutorial will show you how to do that quickly and easily using open-source software, R.

If your data is a hierarchy, a treemap is a good way to show all the values at once and keep the structure in the visual. This is a quick way to make a treemap in R.

A heatmap is a literal way of visualizing a table of numbers, where you substitute the numbers with colored cells. This is a quick way to make one in R.

You’ve seen the NameExplorer from the Baby Name Wizard by Martin Wattenberg. It’s…

There are about a million ways to make a choropleth map. The problem is that a lot of solutions require expensive software or have a high learning curve. It doesn't have to be that way.

You can use the vector-based software normally reserved for designers and artists to make and edit charts.

Following up on my post last week about using Twitter to track eating…

Weather Underground is a useful site and a fun place for weather enthusiasts.…