Application of Bubble Graphs in Data
Analysis
The main
goal of Data Visualization also
known as Information
visualisation is to make data presentation interesting, aesthetically
pleasing and hopefully informative. Good data visualization goes further by
revealing relationships in the data that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
With the absence of hypothesis tests it is easy to discount visualization as
unscientific, but that would be a mistake. There are many uses of data
visualization, and the reality is hypothesis testing can bore the audience, if
not completely surpass their level of understanding. Data visualization then is
a means to an end for statisticians who want to be better communicators. And
it’s a pathway to a better understanding of the data for the designers amongst
us.
A bubble
chart is one of the shapes used to represent and interpret data into meaning
that is applicable to the user. A bubble chart
displays a set of numeric values as circles. It is especially useful for data
sets with dozens to hundreds of values, or with values that differ by several
orders of magnitude. Bubble charts can
be created in a range of standard data applications such as Excel.
How Bubble Charts are created:
The circles in a bubble chart represent different data
values, with the area of a circle corresponding to the value. The positions of
the bubbles don't mean anything, but are designed to pack the circles together
with relatively little wasted space.
Because a bubble
chart uses area to represent numbers, it is best for positive values. If your
data set includes negative values, they will be shown in a different colour: a
circle for 100 and a circle for -100 will both be the same size, but 100 might
be blue and -100 might be red. If your data set has many negative numbers,
consider using a block histogram instead.
To see the exact
value of a circle on the chart, move your mouse over it. If you are charting
more than one dimension, use the menu to choose which dimension to show. If
your data set has multiple numeric columns, you can choose which column to base
the circle sizes on by using the menu at the bottom of the chart.
To highlight a
circle, click it. The highlighted circle will turn orange. To remove the
highlight, just click again. To highlight more than one circle, control-click
the circles. The bubble chart will display the sum of the values of all the
highlighted circles. Your highlights are saved with any comments you make, so
you can easily refer to particular circles in the chart. Highlights are also useful
for following a particular set of items as you switch between numeric columns.
CONCEPTUAL
OVERVIEW
Bubble
graphs are not actually a separate graph type, but a subtype of all Plot
graphs. In Bubble graphs, a third data value, called the bubble data
value, is added to each data item. The bubble value is used to
determine the size of a bubble that appears at the data item's plot point.
A
bubble graph can be used for three-dimensional data—that is, x-y or time data
items that have a quantitative property to them. The example below shows an X-Y
bubble graph.
Possible Applicable Areas of Bubble Charts
·
Equity Funds
·
Location Attractiveness
·
Liquid Funds
·
Sales Growth (Time Series Bubble Graph)
·
Radar Charts
·
Jaccard Clusters
·
Proximity Matrix
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