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Circular proportional area chart

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Circular proportional area chart
Comparison of peak sales and 2008 sales for various G.M. brands.
Visual types
Level of expertise
Source:
New York Times (News)
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/02/18/business/18brand.graphix.ready.html
Interactive features
None
Benefits & pitfalls to avoid
  • Using area or volume to represent data can distort data values, and exaggerate differences between values. For example, if the radius of the circle is used to represent data values, the area of the circle will quadruple if the data values double. There is also an issue of 'perceptual scaling' - the tendency of people to underestimate areas.
Create your own
  • Bubble charts can be created in a range of standard data applications such as Excel.
  • Tables can be created in a range of standard data applications such as Excel.