Distribution

Distribution is a type of data visualization method that displays frequency, how data spreads out, or is grouped in general. On this website, we will elaborate on the type on pictogram charts, population pyramid and stem and leaf plots

Pictogram Chart

Pictogram charts are charts use icons or symbols to represent an specific object, concept or amount like a singular unit or any number of units depending on the context of the chart. These charts have a more engaging and more memorable overall view for the data. There are categories regarding the context and they are compared side by side in either columns or rows. This type of graph could surpass the language barriers by allowing the people to see the symbol and knowing what the data visualizer wants to convey to the data analyzer. If the icon represents a number of units then, sometimes a legend is included at the bottom to specifically determine the units for each icon.

Figure 1. The pictogram chart shown to the left compares the annual carbon dioxide emissions of three countries; China, India and England. Each filled in dot represents a unit of tons of carbon dioxide. And on the bottom of the chart, there is a timeline where one can compare a year to another year on the three countries' annual carbon dioxide emission.

Population Pyramid

A Population pyramid is a pair of histograms back to back to display the age distribution and sex distribution. Each histogram represents each sex (male and female). The X-axis represents the population number in a certain units and Y-axis represents the age groups. The purpose of this graphs is to detect the changes population groups. Since a population pyramid represents a singular country, multiple of them could be compared from country to country. The overall shape of the population pyramid could interpret a lot about a country such rates about fertility/death, the economics of the country and small social cues within age groups and genders.

Figure 2. In this figure, one can see the population pyramid of Italy. As one can see that the country has low fertility rates and low death rates. Less babies are being born as well as less elders tend to die early on. This means that Italy is more developed country due their technological advances in healthcare and medicine (Stage 4 of Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth).

Figure 3. In this figure, one can see the population pyramid of Liberia. The figure demonstrates that there high fertility rates but as well as high death rate. A lot more of babies are born in this country, but population of the older tends to decrease as age increases. Unlike Italy, this a less developed country or developing country since the science hasn't been advanced enough to prevent high death rates (Stage 2 of Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth).

Stem and Leaf Plot

A Stem and Leaf Plot organizes data by their place value to demonstrate distribution within the plot. One section of plot is called the stem where all the place values while the "leaf" column is the following place values that correspond to that place value form the stem. The purpose of the Stem & Leaf Plot could find outliers within the data set or find the mode of the data set. There could be single sided or double sided that compares two data sets to each other. However, there are some limitations for example, too little data could be pointless but too much much could make the plot overly crowded and difficult to read.

Figure 3. This figure to the right is a double sided stem & leaf plot. The data that is being presented in the plot is the times of the northbound vehicle compared the southbound vehicle's hours. The middle section is the stem where the place value is the hour in military time. As one can tell, the most or mode of northbound is during the 8 clock hour.

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