Abstract
The previous chapter looked at the use of time as a single, 1-D coordinate, presented as a simple line. This chapter goes beyond that use to present a range of additional options and techniques for the use of time as a coordinate. Beyond one dimension, we will look at using time as part of a multidimensional coordinate system, introduce transformations of such systems, and consider time displays within a faceting and using time data to facet other charts. We will consider details of the presentation such as aspect ratio, axes and tick marks, and scales. In short, this chapter explores how to make the most of an already powerful technique, time as a coordinate.
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Notes
- 1.
The chart-drawing package designed by the author has been in use since 2002 in over 150 countries by a large number of people from different disciplines. Feature requests for formats like “how do I specify a format to show the Nth week of the year” or “how do I get an axis with values 1Q02, 2Q02, … to work in Japan” and bugs like “8.08 is not being recognized as a date in Germany” are common and indicative of the importance of getting the labels right.
- 2.
The World Series in baseball is a competition restricted to teams playing in the major leagues in the USA. There are two different leagues, and there is a significant rivalry between the Chicago Cubs, in the National League, and the Chicago White Sox, in the American League. For Cub fans, never fear – our turn will come, any century now.
- 3.
Although both “faceting” and “facetting” are valid spellings, the former seems more commonly used, as a quick Google search will indicate.
- 4.
As a US and UK dual citizen of English birth, who has lived much of his life in Ireland, I appreciate that there might be some confusion over why Armagh (a town in Northern Ireland) is in this display. To help clear up confusion, here are some useful definitions: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are all different countries and different nations. Great Britain is the geographical island, consisting basically of England, Scotland, and Wales. UK is short for United Kingdom, which is short for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and is a sovereign state. The individual countries within the state have various degrees of self-rule. Even the International Organization for Standardization confuses Great Britain and the United Kingdom, as the ISO 3166 country code for the UK is, sadly, GB. Ireland, the geographical island, consists of the sovereign state Ireland (more formally, the Republic of Ireland) and the previously mentioned nation of Northern Ireland. The history of how this confusion of names came to be is quite interesting but, as you might guess, somewhat long for a footnote.
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Wills, G. (2010). Coordinate Systems, Transformations, Faceting, and Axes. In: Visualizing Time. Statistics and Computing. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77907-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77907-2_6
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