Lollipop charts can be used where bar chart ink may be visually overwhelming. Shrinking visual obstacles can increase the readability for a large set of data. The base of a lollipop chart is a scatterplot. It is a little bit more complex to create than a bar chart, but it is more visually efficient than a blinding wall of bars. We can edit more individual pieces of a lollipop chart than we can with a bar graph. We can replace each dot with a related icon for a more detailed illustration and it won’t clog the graph like in a bar chart.
Solar Panel Sales
For my lollipop chart design, I converted data given to us for a different graph into a theoretical sales graph for solar panels. I used to work for a solar panel company so that was my motivation for creating this. I used green and yellow to help symbolize the data as renewable energy. Yellow for the solar energy. Green for the greener environment.
I think Lollipop Graphs are really interesting and creative ways to show your data. The first interesting thing is that you can create them in one of two ways: Either through Scatter Plot Graphs or through Bar Charts.
Lollipop Graphs are very simple, yet they show you exactly what you need. and that’s their exact purpose.
In my Lollipop Graph, I chose a data set about popular ice cream toppings. I chose to show them in ascending order because I thought it looked a lot better. It is very minimalistic, but I believe it gets the point across.
While doing some more research, I found some more variation of Lollipop charts like the ‘Cleveland Dot Plot’, which has a shorter line and shows two subgroups. More of these examples can be found at https://www.data-to-viz.com/graph/lollipop.html.
I find that the lollipop graph is useful for small amount of data points, say four to eight. Anything greater than ten and the graph just seems a bit overfilled to me.
composition of persons by belief Worldwide
I decided to use the data on Worldwide religions to make into a Lollipop graph Both vertical and Horizontal styles
Vertical Lollipops
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my images to scale properly when I took them out of excel.
The interesting thing about the data is that is seems to be taken in one year (2010) and projected through the future. For example there is projected data for the breakdown in the year 2030. Thus, the numbers may not be accurate to today.
A lollipop graph is a unique way to represent data and make comparisons between different figures or categories. Lollipop charts are favored over bar graphs when displaying figures of high values. Unlike bar graphs that present data in a cluttered way with a stack of bars, the lollipop chart allows the audience to better grasp the information that the chart is represented in a clear and concise manner. However, this type of chart has its limitations, it is not used to analyze for distribution, relationship, or composition.
This figure shows a comparison between a bar graph and a lollipop chart.
There are two different types of lollipop charts, one is with vertical lines, and the other with horizontal lines. Both graphs offer the same visualization, but with different angles.
This is one example of a lollipop chart This example of another type of lollipop chart was created in Excel.
In conclusion, lollipop chars are a great way to keep data simple, clear, easy to understand, and easy to compare and contrast by the audience.
Reference: Stephen ie D.H. Evergreen. Effective Data Visualization. 2nd edition
So this week I completely failed at trying to make a lollipop chart. I refuse to be too hard on myself because at one point I had been sitting at my kitchen table for over two hours trying to follow the directions from the book. The image below is what I ended up with.
I’m truly not sure where I went wrong. The petty side of my personality is saying who even cares. It’s just a bar graph that’s harder to read than normal. But I know before 3:00 tomorrow I will be trying again. And again. And if I can’t get it right then I’m willing to take that L.
Below is what a lollipop graph… should probably look like. Frankly, I don’t think I’m too far off. I think I can get there. But this has officially passed 3-D bar graph as my least favorite way to display data.
policyviz.com
A live look at me trying to figure out how the hell to make a lollipop graph and why can’t I get mine to look like hers and where are these supposed tools that will help me build one online
When I first looked at Chapter 5 I thought it was way too complicated but the lollipop chart ended up being the easiest chart for me to understand. A lollipop is basically a bar graph but in my opinion is looks way more appealing. Lollipop charts look cleaner and simpler than the standard bar graph which are bulkier and look to cluttered.
The chart I made was just a sample data set of COVID tests that were done on the first of every month. The numbers on the set are not accurate but I was just playing around with the numbers so I could understand how the chart would actually work and how it would look.
My example was a simple example of a lollipop chart but there are so many different ways to actually display this type of chart. Similar to the back to back bar graphs, you can create a lollipop chart that looks the same. You can also switch the axis and make the chart of the y axis going horizontal instead of vertical on the x axis. The image below shows a combination of both the horizontal graph and also the back to back graph.
Bar graphs are an awesome tool….but they aren’t perfect
Bar graphs only tell you what your group performances were. But what if you had a specific goal or mark in mind? And that is where benchmark lines fall short, in their story telling ability.
See here you not only have your group performances displayed in an organized manner, you are also able to quickly gauge the individual group performances against a specific goal.
Some Of The Benefits Of Adding a Benchmark line
Understand How Your Business Stacks Up Against Your Competitors
2. More effectively Track the Progress of Business Goals and Objectives
3. Set performance expectations
Your line does not always have to be a positive number, sometime it can be negative or even Zero.
The charts were made by Excel base on the data set from Chapter 5 of the book Effective Data Visualization 2 edition of Stephanie D.H. Evergreen. If you want to display data set with dots, you can use the lollipop chart.
I am not sure whether cost of ink and paper is one of advantage for using them.
The lollipop chart is a composite chart with bars and circles. It is a variant of the bar chart with a circle at the end, to highlight the data value. Like a bar chart, a lollipop chart is used to compare categorical data. They are visually different alternatives. For this kind of composite chart, we are able to use more visual elements to convey information. The lollipop chart is to be useful compared to a normal bar chart. It is best to use a lollipop chart if you are dealing with a large number of values and when the values are all high. This kind of graph can replace column and bar graphs.
Below is the Lollipop Chart that I created. There is a lot of data in this chart and there are also high percentages. Therefore, a lollipop chart is a great choice to represent this data.
Lollipop Chart By: Taylor Alotto
This is also another example of a Lollipop chart I came across that is a slightly different. This chart was not created by me. I found it so cool how this chart was created and the details that were added. I am linking the website where I found this chart, because the site also shares how to create a lollipop chart. Another cool detail about this site is the graphs are interactive. Check it out! I found the information that was provided on the site useful.
When looking at a comparison infographic, sometimes it’s difficult to determine the standard for comparing two or more things. One solution is to apply a benchmark to the chart, but there are many ways to go about it.
Benchmark comparisons in the news
As someone who has a professional interest in the natural sciences, it saddens me to look at the news and discover that not everyone in the United States trusts scientists to do the right thing. More often than not, the media cites misinformation and alleged government propaganda as sources for such distrust. However, I do sometimes wonder what opinion people from other countries have of scientists. Recently, I read a Pew Research Center report about the scientific community’s relationship to the general public, and I was surprised that people in countries like India and the Netherlands have far more trust in their nation’s scientists than the American public has in ours.
On the other end of the spectrum, I found myself wondering why nations like Japan and South Korea are skeptical of scientists. They are among the world’s leaders in technological advances, yet the people don’t seem to trust scientists to do the right thing. When compared to median values, the United States exceeds the benchmark, if only by a slight margin, which gives me hope that the vocal minority that distrusts scientists will one day see their error and learn to trust science.
Another way of showing a benchmark is by comparing positive and negative values to determine favorable perspectives. With the United States presidential election fast approaching, the public is more divided than ever on whether or not this year’s elections will be run well. It is likely that a divide in partisan politics and factors like the current COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing police brutality protests are responsible for this immense discourse.
Based on Pew Research Center’s data, I estimate that conservative-leaning voters believe that the election will be handled well. On the other hand, liberal-leaning voters believe that this year’s election will run into a series of blunders or be subject to manipulative interference. As someone who wants to see Donald Trump and his alleged enablers voted out for the sake of the rest of the nation, I am hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.
What about comparisons related to topics I enjoy?
Even when I am not catching up on the news, I still enjoy looking at comparisons for the things I love. For example, I’ve been playing Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV Online (shorthand: “FFXIV”) for about a year, and have a strong interest in joining the small community of players who spend most of their time on high-end or difficult pieces of content. When a new piece of content comes out, one of the first places I go to look for information is FF Logs. Their tools analyze combat data and give players a sense of their overall performance and where they can improve. They also have statistical charts that show performance averages for each of the game’s 17 combat classes (jobs). For example, one of the most difficult “raid dungeons” currently in the game goes by the name of “Eden’s Verse: Refulgence.” (shorthand: “E8”). Raids in FFXIV typically have two modes of difficulty, normal and “savage,” with the exception of specially-themed “ultimate” raids. The community typically pays attention to statistics and ranking for savage raids. In the first few weeks of release, Eden’s Verse: Refulgence (Savage) (shorthand: E8S) proved to be a difficult challenge for most raid groups.
A box plot comparing the minimum, lower quartile, median, upper quartile, and maximum damage per second (DPS) for all 17 jobs in one of Final Fantasy XIV Online’s more difficult fights. Source: FF Logs.
Combat jobs in FFXIV are divided into three major roles: tanks, healers, and damage per second (DPS). The box plot chart above shows an aggregate ranking for job performance in E8S over the course of two weeks across all percentiles. DPS jobs typically put out far greater damage than tanks or healers, with magic-based DPS jobs having the highest damage output. The only exception to that rule is the samurai job, which is typically described as being a selfish DPS job that brings little party support to a fight as it deals heavy hits at melee range.
Viewed from a different perspective– say, comparing the maximum and minimum percentiles for E8S damage– certain trends seem to appear among the 17 jobs, and it reflects in how well the player performs in the fight. The best players in the world generally fare much better and clear the raid faster than players who barely have a grasp of their jobs or exhibit poor performance.
A chart comparing the damage per second (DPS) output for E8S, in the maximum and minimum percentiles, across all 17 jobs in Final Fantasy XIV Online (job abbreviations are used). The jobs I play the most are highlighted in color. Source: FF Logs.
Compared to others who play the same jobs as me (color-highlighted in the chart above), I would say that I am somewhere between the two extremes. However, in the case of the job I play the most, red mage, I tend to lean toward the lower end of the spectrum. I recall running a four-person dungeon once with some of my friends a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded. One of them, who went in with a tank job, had a third-party tool open to analyze everyone’s damage output in real-time (which is against the developer’s terms of service, but Square Enix doesn’t crack down on third-party tools if players don’t discuss them publicly in-game), and once the program crunched the numbers, he uploaded the data to FF Logs and sent me a link to the log over Discord. As I looked it over, he laughed in voice chat and likely shook his head at how low my damage output was. Another one of my friends, a healer who did significantly better than me, pointed out that at least I knew my spellcasting priority rotation as a red mage and the random black mage who got matched with our three-player party did less damage than me. I didn’t care that my damage output was sub-par, though. I was happy just to run content with my friends.
