ABSTRACT
Data graphics provide one of the most accessible, compelling, and expressive modes to investigate and depict patterns in data. This chapter motivates the importance of well-designed data graphics and describes taxonomy for understanding their composition. It presents a framework—rooted in scientific research—for understanding data graphics. Data graphics can be understood in terms of four basic elements: visual cues, coordinate system, scale, and context. The purpose of data graphics is to help the viewer make meaningful comparisons, but a bad data graphic can do just the opposite: It can instead focus the viewer's attention on meaningless artifacts, or ignore crucial pieces of relevant but external knowledge. One of the fundamental challenges of creating data graphics is condensing multivariate information into a two-dimensional image. While three-dimensional images are occasionally useful, they are often more confusing than anything else. The chapter identifies the visual cues, coordinate system, and scale in a series of simple data graphics.
