Choosing the right dimensions, choosing the right chart

The first step toward making a solid piece of data visualization is choosing the right type of chart for a project. Quite frequently, data will contain many, many dimensions. It's your job to choose which dimensions to visualize. Similarly, it's your job to choose how to visualize those dimensions.

Note

It's very easy to get sucked into thinking that you need a map for everything. Nowhere is this more true than in the creation of content for elections; everyone thinks of the giant choropleths behind newscasters as they watch results come in, each region turning the hue of the party it voted for. However, maps are primarily beneficial for depicting geographic data and the proximity of things in a physical space. In an American election, Idaho and New Hampshire both have four electoral college seats, but the latter is a fraction of the former's size. New York state is geographically much smaller than Montana, but it has 29 electoral seats...