Effective Plotting
Color in Scatter and Line Plots
Brett Andrews
05.27.2020
Don't make me think!
Take advantage of human perception.
Color better than shape.
Kieran Healy, "Data Vizualization: a Practical Introduction."
Which shapes play nicely together?
Demiralp et al. (2014), "Learning Perceptual Kernels for Vizualization Design."
Which colors play nicely together?
Demiralp et al. (2014), "Learning Perceptual Kernels for Vizualization Design."
Qualitative Colormaps
Distinguishability falls off a cliff unless data is highly structured.
Kieran Healy, "Data Vizualization: a Practical Introduction."
Don't need to show all data in one panel.
Kieran Healy, "Data Vizualization: a Practical Introduction."
Multiple panels add structure.
Kieran Healy, "Data Vizualization: a Practical Introduction."
Alpha for overlapping points.
Kieran Healy, "Data Vizualization: a Practical Introduction."
Color as a quantitative encoding is not ideal...
but value is better than...
...saturation, which is better than...
...hue (don't use jet).
Sequential Colormaps
Diverging Colormaps
Colormaps in the wild.
Cyclic Colormaps
Rabbit Hole:
Don't make me think!
Take advantage of human perception.