From the course: Learning Data Visualization

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Comparison visualizations

Comparison visualizations

From the course: Learning Data Visualization

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Comparison visualizations

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- [Instructor] One of the most common tasks people have when looking at data is comparing things. That's kind of the main point for a lot of data exploration. For instance, if I want to compare one burrito joint to another I might want to compare their scores to get a quick sense of which one is better. Now, if I consult my handy dandy visual vocabulary cheat sheet I don't see comparison as one of my choices. This introduces a little pet peeve I have with that tool. I think that rather than ranking and magnitude as categories, there should be one called comparison and these two would be subcategories within it. Because whether I'm only interested in the rank order of some values or the actual magnitudes of those values, odds are my task is still to compare them. Anyhoo, those two columns in the visual vocabulary give me comparison visualizations. In fact, research has shown that when you show people bar charts, one of the…

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