25 Chart Effects That Make Your Data Visualization Advanced

For data analysts, visualization is always a timeless study that reveals the laws behind data. The results of the business analysis are ultimately presented to the decision-making layer. And charts are more visual and clearer than pure numbers and can reflect many trends and problems.

But many people will ask: what if the data visualization I am doing myself is too ugly?

In fact, it is very simple to make beautiful visualizations. Many people just understand the basic types of charts, such as histograms, bar charts, pie charts, etc. However, in order to achieve the advanced visualization, you must master some advanced chart effects.

Today I will introduce you 25 chart effects that are very classic and practical. If you can use them neatly, you can make your visualization instantly cool and beautiful! The following figures are the visualizations I made with these charts. Check them out. It’s really easy to achieve such effects.

Dimensions and indicators

First of all, we must understand the basic common sense of charts: dimensions and indicators.

A dimension is the angle at which the data is observed and a description of the data. For example, if the dimension is the region, then there are cities like Shanghai and New York.
The indicator is obviously the type of data you want to analyze, such as sales, unit price, and so on.

The essence of data analysis is the combination of various dimensions and indicators. For example, if I want to understand and analyze sales across the country, I need to combine regional dimensions and sales indicators. To be more thorough, the horizontal axis in the plane axis can be understood as a dimension, and the vertical axis can be understood as an indicator.

25 Chart Effects

1. KPI Indicator Card

The KPI indicator card is the most intuitive component for displaying KPI values. It’s frequently used in visualization. It can directly display the values of selected fields, such as sales, gross margin and other indicators. The effect is as follows.

Dimension field: 0
Indicator field: 1

2. Color Table

The color table is used to display different text colors corresponding to different dimension classifications. Its advantage is that it can visually show the data difference. The effect is as follows.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

3. MiniGraphic

The mini graphic can visually and clearly display the corresponding indicator value of each category, such as the amount of pageviews of each access channel shown in the figure below.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

4. Thermodynamic Diagram

The thermodynamic diagram shows the weight of each point in the coordinate range in a special highlight mode. The difference in the indicator data is displayed by the color highlight on the map. It is also a commonly used chart effect.

Dimension field: 2
Indicator field: 0

5. Partitioned Histogram

The partitionedhistogram is a column chart that shows the various classification indicators under the dimension in parallel. The advantage is that the histogram is displayed in partitions and can be compared up and down.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

6. Stacked Histogram

Astackedhistogram is used to show the relationship between a single item and the whole, and to compare the share of each numerical value in each category.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

7. Multi-series Histogram

The multi-series histogram is used to show the contrast between different series of indicators, that is, the combination of partitioned histogram and stacked histogram.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

8. Comparison Histogram

The comparison histogramis used for comparative analysis of two indicators in the same dimension. Through it, we can more intuitively see the contrast gap.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

9. Waterfall Map

When the user wants to express the evolution of the number between the two data points, such as the change between the salary before taxand the take-home salary, the waterfall map can be used.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

10. Partitioned line chart

The partitioned line chart is used to view the trend of data by areas and indicators.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

11. Multi-series Line Chart

Themulti-series line chartis used to view the trend of indicators in the same area, which can visually see the trend comparison.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

12. Radar Map

Radar maps, also known as spider web maps, show the relationship between individual data series and the relationship between a particular series and the other series.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

13. Range Area Graph

Range area graphs are used to display continuous data. They are good for showing trends, accumulations, reductions, and changes.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

14. Combination Chart

For the analysis of multiple indicators, different indicators may be viewed differently. For some indicators, we need to look at its trend. For others, we need to check the data comparison. In this case, you can use the combination chartto achieve this function.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

15. Scatter Plot

The scatter plotis used to show the relationship between different data points and is used to compare trends over uneventime periods.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

16. Aggregate Bubble Graphs

Aggregate bubble graphsuse numerical type fields to determine the area of the bubble to achieve contrast.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1 or 2

17. Rose Diagram

Rose diagram is used to show the share of each value in the total value.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

18. Regional Map

When we need to analyze the data according to the region, we can use the regional map. The map of FineReport is basically consistent with all the styles used for data analysis by map. And data can be displayed according to provinces, cities, countries and even some customized maps.

Dimensions: longitude and latitude

19. Point Map

Many companies have a wide range of business. If the company wants to view the data of each site (specific location) in a certain area, it will be more complicated to implement with maps, and the accuracy is not high. So you can use the point map. It can accurately and quickly locate the position.

Dimensions: longitude and latitude

20. Flow Map

Flow maps are often used to visualize origin destination flow data. They are mostly used in inter-regional trade, traffic flow, population migration, shopping consumption behavior, communication information flow, aviation routes and so on.

Dimensions: longitude and latitude

21. Heat Map

The heat map is used to represent the weight of each point in the geographic area. The following figure shows the level of PM2.5for environmental monitoring in each region.

Dimensions: longitude and latitude

22. Rectangular Tree Diagram

The rectangular tree diagram is used to describe the proportion of the hierarchical structure data, and it can drill down and display the underlying data.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

23. Word Cloud

The word cloud is a type of chart that visually displays the frequency of data. It can visually highlight the keywords with high frequency of occurrence, forming a “keyword cloud layer”, thus filtering out a large amount of text information. You can easily get the point at a glance.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

24. Multi-layer Pie Chart

Amulti-layer pie chartrefers to a pie chart with multiple layers and there is a containment relationship between layers. Multi-layer pie charts are suitable for displaying complex tree structure data with parent-child relationships, such as geographic area data, upper and lower levels of the company, time levels like quarter and month, and so on.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 1

25. Percentage Stacked Histogram

In the percentage stacked histogram, the sum of the series under each category is 100%, and each series is stacked according to the percentage, so that the proportion of each series can be visually seen.

Dimension field: 1
Indicator field: 2

All the above chart effects are taken from FineReport, you can click here to download and use it for free. And here is a learning path for FineReport beginners.

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