Graphics encyclopedia

Question

I have to build a multi-user webapp which is about traffic measurements, prognoses etc. At this point I know that I'll use bar and pie charts. Unfortunately, those chart types aren't rich in expressing all the data that I collect and compute.

I'm looking for a collection of graphical charts. It is very ok if I have to buy a book or anything else. I need to find some graphical samples with explanations in order to inspire me.

Do you know of any such resource?

Do you have any advice for me?

Answer 1

For an online summary, check out A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.

Answer 2

If you fancy R, you can see the R graph gallery.

Answer 3

Cleveland, William S. 1993. Visualizing data. ISBN 0963488406.

Answer 4

Systat (Lee Wilkinson) was an early leader in statistical graphics software. It always has had a nice visual gallery.

Answer 5

A visual gallery of really creative graphics (but without much organization, unfortunately) is available on the Wolfram site (Mathematica).

Answer 6

I've also found good material at The Gallery of Data Visualization: The Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics, at
http://www.datavis.ca/gallery/index.php

Answer 7

Visual explanations or anything else by Tufte is inspirational.

Answer 8

A Tour through the Visualization Zoo (Heer et al., Visualization 8(5) 2010) offers a particularly interesting overview of "innovative" and interactive techniques for displaying data.

On a related point, a good software for data visualization, including the aforementioned gallery, is Protovis, which comes with a lot of examples.