Eight New Ideas From Data Visualization Experts

(This article was first published on  Plotly, and kindly contributed toR-bloggers)     

This post summarizes and visualizes eight key ideas we’ve heard from data visualization experts. Check out our firstCase Study to learn more about using Plotly Enterprise on-premise, on your servers. To get started on free online graphing like in this post, check outour tutorials.

Make Interactive Graphs

Pictures of graphs in PowerPoints, dashboards, and emails can be dull. Viewers get value when they can see data with their mouse, zoom, filter, drill down, and study graphs. Plotly usesD3.js so all your graphs are interactive.The graph below models the historical temperature record and associated temperature changes contributed by each factor.

Make Graphs With IPython Widges In Plotly & Domino

Our friends at Domino wrote a blog post showing how you or a developer on your team can use Domino, Plotly’s APIs, and IPython Notebooks to add sliders, filters, and widgets to graphs and take exploration a new direction. Seeour tutorial to learn more.  

Reproducible Research with Plotly & Overleaf

Institutional memory is crucial for research. But data is easily lost if it’s on a thumbdrive, in an email, or on a desktop. The team atOverleaf is enabling reproducible, online publication. You can import Plotly graphs into Overleaf papers and write together. 

Plotly graphs are mobile-optimized, reproducible, downloadable, and web-based. Just add the URL in your presentation or Overleaf project to share it all. For examples, for the climate graph above:

• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628/.png
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.pdf
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.svg
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.eps
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.py
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.m
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.r
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.json
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.jl
• https://plot.ly/~Dreamshot/628.embed

Use Statistical Graphs

Graphing pros love using statisical graphs like histograms, heatmaps, 2D histograms, and box plots to investigate and explain data. Below, we’re showing a log axis plot, a boxplot, and a histogram. The numbers are Facebook users per country. Curious? We havetutorials.

Use 3D Graphs

Below see the prestige, education, and income of a few professions, sorted by gender. 3D graphing enables a whole new dimension of interactivity. The points are projected on the outside of the graph. Click and hold to flip the plot or toggle to zoom.Click here to visit the graph. Or takea 3D graphing tutorial.

Embed Interactive Graphs With Dashboards

In a fast-moving world, it’s crucial to get the most recent data. That’s why we make it easy to embed updating graphs in dashboards, like the temperature graph below of San Francisco and Montréal (live version here). See our tutorials on updating graphs, interactive dashboards or graphing from databases. 

Customiz Interactive Graphs With JavaScript

For further customizations, use our JavaScript API. You (or a developer on your team) can build custom controls that change anything about an embedded Plotly graph

Embed Interactive Graphs With Shiny

If you are an R user, you can render and embed interactive ggplot2 graphs in Shiny with Plotly. Seeour tutorial.





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