Grammar of Graphics: The secret sauce of Powerful Data Stories
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Charts are not monolithic entities. Learn how you can invent your own visuals by dynamically mapping data onto graphical elements. Napoleon's March is used to illustrate how this concept can be used to create powerful data stories, or its absence can make a mockery of this visual, lacking any narrative! This is the deck from a talk by Ganes Kesari at Data Visualization New York meeting, on 1-Nov-18 at NYC.
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Grammar of Graphics: The secret sauce of Powerful Data Stories
- 1. Grammar of Graphics: The Secret Sauce of Powerful Data Stories Ganes Kesari Co-founder & Head of Analytics, Gramener DVNY 1-Nov ‘18
- 2. “Lions are mammals belonging to the cat family eating is the ingestion of food to provide an organism with energy giraffes are the tallest living animals”. “Lions eat giraffes”.
- 3. Languages allow fluid construction Every word in a sentence has grammatical definition. Slight changes in words can dramatically alter the meaning of a sentence.
- 4. Area Sales Growth North 5 3 East 25 10 West 15 5 South 20 8 Central 10 12 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 Sales is the width Growth is the X-axis Growth is the height Sales is the Y-axis Sales is the angle Growth is the colour Scatterplot Marimekko Donut Fluid representation with data
- 5. http://www.science-craft.com/2014/07/08/introducing-the-grammar-of-graphics-plotting-concept/ A foundation for Grammar of Graphics Sentences are elegant compositions of carefully chosen grammatical elements that convey precise & clear messages. Visualizations are an elegant mapping of data onto the right visual encodings to tell a story.
- 6. Grammar of Graphics Charts are NOT monolithic entities Theme Coordinates Statistics Facets Geometries Aesthetics Data We have seven layered grammatical elements to play with
- 7. A simple tutorial The data.. The tool.. on
- 8. Map Price to x, Sales to y & plot as points ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales)) + geom_point() Layers 1–2–3: Data - Aesthetics - Geometries
- 9. ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales, color=Region)) + geom_point() Let’s color the points by Region Layers 1–2–3: Data - Aesthetics - Geometries
- 10. ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales, color=Region, size=Volume)) + geom_point() Let’s also size the bubbles by Volume Layers 1–2–3: Data - Aesthetics - Geometries
- 11. We can plot Regions side by side (facets) Layer 4: Facets ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales, color=Region, size=Volume)) + geom_point() + facet_wrap(~Region)
- 12. We’ll compute the mean Sales at each price point Layer 5: Statistics ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales)) + stat_summary_bin(fun.y = “mean”, geom = “bar”)
- 13. We’ll plot this on the Polar coordinates instead of the default x-y (Cartesian) Layer 6: Coordinates ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales, color=Region, size=Volume)) + geom_point() + facet_wrap(~Region) + coord_polar()
- 14. Switching back to x-y plot, we’ll now throw in some non-data ink Layer 7: Theme ggplot(data, aes(x=Price, y=Sales, color=Region, size=Volume)) + geom_point() + theme_bw()
- 15. Grammar of Graphics: The 7 Layers Describes all the non-data ink Plotting space for the data Statistical models & summaries Rows and columns of sub-plots Shapes used to represent the data Scales onto which data is mapped The actual variables to be plotted Theme Coordinates Statistics Facets Geometries Aesthetics Data
- 16. NAPOLEAN’S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN OF 1812 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minard.png a
- 17. An Experiment ! What would happen if we recreate the legendary Visual ignoring the right Grammar or relevant Encodings?
- 18. LET’S EXTRACT NAPOLEAN’S CAMPAIGN DATA… The trail Locations Weather
- 19. Soldier Loss Soldier Loss% Key Battles/Landmarks Temp Drop 412,000 97.63% 47 -30 Napoleon’s Russian Campaign (1812-1813)
- 21. In Summary Don’t be locked down by a limited library of charts Invent your visuals and compose freely Build a foundation for nimble and powerful data stories
- 22. Grammar makes language expressive. A language that has words and no grammar expresses only as many ideas as there are words. - Leland Wilkinson “
- 23. 23 @kesaritweets @kesari gkesari.com INSIGHTS AI & MACHINE LEARNING SERVICES VISUAL NARRATIVES STORYTELLING Creative ThinkingCritical Reasoning SOFTWARE THROUGH DATA STORY TELLING WITH GRAMENER THANK YOU! Twitter Medium Website
Editor's Notes
- The Russian Campaign of Napoleon has been immortalized by Charles Minard’s Visualization. This is an effective example of how multiple data attributes are conveyed succinctly by efficient use of the visual encodings.