Which chart to use?

Lollipop

<Lollipop>

You have a long list of categories and bars would be a wall of ink.

Dumbbell

<Dumbbell>

Each item has a before and an after, and the gap is the story.

Slope

<Slope>

Two moments, many items, and you want to see who crossed whom.

Bump

<Bump>

Rank matters more than the value, and it changes over time.

Back-to-Back

<BackToBack>

Two groups share the same categories, such as men and women by age band.

Bullet

<Bullet>

Each value has a target and some qualitative ranges to sit in.

Spider

<Spider>

One item scored on several measures, and you want to see its shape against another.

Bar Gauge

<BarGauge>

You want to show how full each value is between a minimum and a maximum.

Forest

<Forest>

Every row is an estimate with a confidence interval, such as a study.

Mekko

<Mekko>

The size of each group matters as much as its internal mix.

Waffle

<Waffle>

You want people to count units, such as 63 out of 100 users.

Warped Waffle

<WarpedWaffle>

A waffle, but bent into a ring when the page needs to feel like a dashboard.

Sunburst

<Sunburst>

The whole splits into parts, which split into parts, a few levels deep.

Icicle

<Icicle>

The hierarchy is deep or the names are long and need room to breathe.

Treemap Force

<TreemapForce>

Groups have sizes and the items inside are also linked to each other.

Ternary

<Ternary>

Every observation is a mixture of exactly three components that sum to one.

Nightingale Rose

<NightingaleRose>

The parts repeat around a cycle, like months or hours of the day.

Funnel

<Funnel>

Each stage keeps only some of the previous stage, and you want to see the leak.

Time Series

<TimeSeries>

One or more measurements over time, with annotations or a comparison to last week.

Trend

<Trend>

The x-axis is not time but still only goes up, such as distance or load.

Horizon

<Horizon>

Many series, little height, and you still want to see the shape of each.

State Timeline

<StateTimeline>

A thing is in one of a few states, and you care how long each lasted.

Status History

<StatusHistory>

A grid of checks or jobs over time, one cell each.

Gantt

<Gantt>

Tasks with a start and an end, and who is waiting for whom.

Heatmap

<Heatmap>

Time on one axis and a value range on the other, and the counts are the story.

Bump

<Bump>

The question is who was ahead, not by how much.

Histogram

<Histogram>

One variable, one picture, counts per bucket.

Barcode

<Barcode>

You want to see every value as a tick, without binning anything.

Beeswarm

<Beeswarm>

Every point deserves to be seen, grouped by category, with no overlaps.

Ridgeline

<Ridgeline>

You want to compare the shapes of many distributions, stacked like mountains.

Heatmap

<Heatmap>

A distribution that changes over time, so every column is a histogram.

Control Chart

<ControlChart>

Is this process still behaving, or has something changed?

Bland-Altman

<BlandAltman>

Two methods measure the same thing and you want to know if they agree.

Spectrogram

<Spectrogram>

A signal's frequencies as they change over time.

XY Chart

<XYChart>

Two numeric variables, optionally a third as size or colour.

Parallel Coordinates

<ParallelCoordinates>

Many variables per item, and you want to see which items run alike.

Efficient Frontier

<EfficientFrontier>

Risk against return, and the edge of what is possible.

Attention Map

<AttentionMap>

A matrix of weights, such as which token looks at which token.

H-R Diagram

<HrDiagram>

A scatter whose shape is the whole point: stars, by temperature and brightness.

Ternary Contour

<TernaryContour>

A value that changes across the three-part mixture triangle.

Dendrogram

<Dendrogram>

You want to see which items cluster together, and how tightly.

Sankey

<Sankey>

Quantities flow through stages and you want to see where they go.

Sankey Funnel

<SankeyFunnel>

A funnel in which you also care where the drop-offs went.

Sankey Matrix

<SankeyMatrix>

A Sankey that got too tangled, and you want exact values per pair.

Alluvial

<Alluvial>

Groups change membership between a few moments in time.

Chord Diagram

<ChordDiagram>

Flows between every pair of groups, in both directions.

Arc Diagram

<ArcDiagram>

Links between items in a meaningful order, such as time or position.

Circos

<Circos>

Links between positions on long segments, like a genome.

Node Graph

<NodeGraph>

Services and the calls between them, with health at a glance.

Treemap Force

<TreemapForce>

A graph whose nodes also belong to groups of different sizes.

Venn

<Venn>

Two or three sets, where the shapes can be exact.

UpSet

<UpSet>

Four or more sets, or you need to read exact combination sizes.

Flame Graph

<FlameGraph>

Where does a program spend its time, call by call?

Icicle

<Icicle>

Same as a flame graph, but the tree is anything you like.

Sunburst

<Sunburst>

A compact tree with a few levels and shares at each.

Dendrogram

<Dendrogram>

A tree of merges, with the height of each merge meaning something.

Traces

<Traces>

One request, many services, and where the time went.

Ishikawa

<Ishikawa>

A problem with a list of possible causes, grouped by category.

Stat

<Stat>

A big number with its history and its change.

Gauge

<Gauge>

A value on a scale with thresholds that mean something.

Bar Gauge

<BarGauge>

Several values, each against its own range.

Bullet

<Bullet>

A value against a target, with qualitative bands behind it.

HoneyComb

<HoneyComb>

Many numbers, each one a cell, coloured by state.

Candlestick

<Candlestick>

Open, high, low and close per period, with volume.

Heikin-Ashi

<HeikinAshi>

You want candles that smooth over the noise and make trends easier to see.

Renko

<Renko>

Time is a distraction and only price moves of a set size matter.

Kagi

<Kagi>

Reversals matter, and you want thick and thin lines to mark the regime.

Point & Figure

<PointFigure>

A column of Xs and Os, because someone in your trading room insists.

Waterfall

<Waterfall>

Starting value, a list of gains and losses, ending value.

Oscilloscope

<Oscilloscope>

A waveform, triggered and drawn like the real instrument.

Spectrogram

<Spectrogram>

Frequency content over time.

Eye Diagram

<EyeDiagram>

A high-speed link, and whether its bits can still be told apart.

Smith Chart

<SmithChart>

Impedance and matching on a transmission line.

Root Locus

<RootLocus>

How the poles of a loop move when you turn the gain.

Radiation Pattern

<RadiationPattern>

How an antenna sends power in different directions.

Phase Portrait

<PhasePortrait>

The trajectories of a system in its state space.

Poincaré Map

<PoincareMap>

A continuous system sampled once per cycle.

Bifurcation

<Bifurcation>

How long-term behaviour changes as a parameter is turned.

Quiver

<Quiver>

A vector field drawn as little arrows.

Hodograph

<Hodograph>

The path of a vector's tip, such as wind with height.

Choropleth

<Choropleth>

A value per region, shaded on a map.

Stüve

<Stuve>

An atmospheric sounding on straight isotherms and adiabats.

Tephigram

<Tephigram>

The same sounding, on the diagram your forecasters grew up on.

Piper

<Piper>

Groundwater chemistry, with all the major ions in one picture.

Harker

<Harker>

How oxides change as magma gets more evolved.

Ternary

<Ternary>

A mix of three things, such as sand, silt and clay.

Sequence Logo

<SequenceLogo>

Which letters are conserved at each position of an alignment?

Ramachandran

<Ramachandran>

The backbone angles of a protein.

Circos

<Circos>

A genome with links, rings and coverage tracks.

Word Cloud

<WordCloud>

A first impression of which words come up most.

Pareto

<Pareto>

A few causes make most of the trouble, and you want to see which.

Ishikawa

<Ishikawa>

You need to brainstorm causes by category before you measure them.

Control Chart

<ControlChart>

You need to know whether the process changed or just wobbled.

Flame Graph

<FlameGraph>

The thing that is slow is a program.

Traces

<Traces>

The thing that is slow is a request across services.