Dataviz logo
Communities and Local Government logo Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion logo

Dot plot

Current rating No ratings for this example yet
Rate this Impact low high Accuracy low high Your level of expertise
What are ratings?

Ratings let you assess a visualisation according to:
 

Impact:
How much a visualisation makes you take notice of it
 

Accuracy:
How well it portrays the true data behind it
 

Rate visualisations according to your own impressions and expertise. We also ask you to let us know how you rate your own level of expertise in terms of data and visualisation, so that we can filter ratings further in future.
 

For more information on ratings and levels of expertise, see our help page.

Dot plot
This chart shows a comparison between the level of capitalisation at two time points.
Visual types
Level of expertise
Source:
By Romain Francois after a graph produced by the Financial Times (Visualisation information web site)
http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/RGraphGallery.php?graph=150
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.