Basic Graphs
It is important to know how to create basic graphs and the technical process for doing so. In part, it forces us to confront basic questions like
- What variables should correspond to the x- and y-axes?
- What variables should be encoded with color or size?
- What variables should be encoded as I switch facets (groups)?
But before those question can be addressed thoughtfully, we must understand that they are even an option.
There are many different graphing software packages and a user should
concentrate on learning at least one package. I do most of my graphing
using ggplot2 in R and I have a
tutorial
on it.
For this book (and class) we will focus on using Tableau Desktop. I’ve developed a few Youtube videos to introduce how to interact with this software.