# What do you call a graph where you color a grid based on some measure?

I mean something like this chart showing the frequencies of a user's public contributions on GitHub.

I really like this kind of chart, as I think that they display the intended data in a really nice and easy to see way, but I have no clue what they are called, so I can't look for a library to help me generate them. Can someone tell me the name of this type of graph / chart?

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## 1 Answer

I think you are looking at a heat map. The one you link to is a fancy interactive version that presumably requires java code. In R the function would be ?heatmap. There is a tutorial for how to make them in R here. This is the initial output of their code:

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Thanks! That's it. I guess I didn't think of it as a heat map because mentally I associated HeatMaps to spacial graphs, kind lof like this one: clicktale.com/sites/default/files/field/image/… , but I guess this next one is a good example of how they actually overlap zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/… . Thanks! –  Francisco Noriega Mar 14 at 23:23
Now knowing the name of the graph I was looking for, it looks its a sub-specialty of the Heatmaps called (quite aptly) "Calendar Heat Map". If somebody (like me) is looking for an example in Javascript, checkout kamisama.github.io/cal-heatmap –  Francisco Noriega Mar 14 at 23:27