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

Matplotlib docs

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...

J. C. Adamson, "Physics and Physiology of Color."

...saturation, which is better than...

J. C. Adamson, "Physics and Physiology of Color."

...hue (don't use jet).

Jake VanderPlas

Sequential Colormaps

Matplotlib docs

Diverging Colormaps

Matplotlib docs

Colormaps in the wild.

Marvin

Cyclic Colormaps

New in Matplotlib 3!

Rabbit Hole:

Harvard CS 171 Visualization

Don't make me think!

Take advantage of human perception.