Today’s visualisation challenge

data-visualisation
parameterised-plots
How many people picked each of 12 possible options as the top, second top and third top priority, and how can we make sure this scales nicely for 100+ respondents…
Author
Affiliation

Cara Thompson

Building Stories with Data

Published

June 25, 2025

On it! Parameterising graphs across different orders of magnitude in the data (the demo data has about 10 rows, so 10 data points per column, but we might end up with 150) has its challenges (hello axis limits, out-of-plot annotations and dot overcrowding) - but these are fun coding/maths challenges to solve!

Circular graph with one half pink the other half yellow. Data points look like bubbles in green and blue tones with paths to the bubbles marked in darker and lighter tones of teal.

Current status: staring at a graph where it looks like bubbles are heading towards the edges of a circle - the further out the bubbles, the more this option was picked as a top priority, the darker the path of the bubbles, the more people picked that option as one of to the top 3 priorities.

So much fun. Thank you [Gavin Russell][www.linkedin.com/in/gavin-russell-48bb556/] for the challenge! Still a few steps to go, but we’re heading somewhere pretty exciting!

P.S. Yes, it’s squished vertically; theme(aspect.ratio) also works on radial plots. No, I haven’t put all the labels on, and yes that will help with interpretation! Work in progress…

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For attribution, please cite this work as:
Thompson, Cara. 2025. “Today’s Visualisation Challenge.” June 25, 2025. https://www.cararthompson.com/posts/2025-06-25-gavin-russell-graph-challenge/.