Alternate Representations

It is an important skill to be able to determine if multiple visualizations can be created for the same data. This allows us to choose the most appropriate visualization for our data.

When we have multiple different representations, we can reason about graphical encoding and compare the pros and cons of alternate designs.

Some examples of alternate designs:

• A dot plot is an alternate design for a bar chart. A line chart, on the other hand, is a poor alternate design for a bar chart because it may convey a pattern, or indicate that the discrete categories are ordered or continuous.

• A slope chart is an alternate design for a scatter plot. Although not as effective as a scatter plot, it can be used to denote the direction in which the values are going.

• Alternate designs for a line plot include bar charts, area charts and dot plots. A dot plot, however, is a very poor alternate design because trends that are clearly visible in line plots cannot be depicted by dot plots.

• Matrix alternatives include stacked bar charts (this representation makes it difficult to denote quantities), or bar graphs with nested categories (this representation doesn't scale easily).

• Alternate designs for symbol maps include bar charts.