Core chart types

Heatmaps show two different categorical variables on the x and y axes; they’re one of the most information-dense ways for identifying outliers or complicated patterns, but their use of coloration makes them poor at representing quantities.

• Required aesthetics

  • x: A categorical or time variable

  • y: A categorical or time variable

  • color: A word or textcount variable; sets the coloration scheme.

• Optional aesthetics

  • None

• Other configuration

  • Can be set to a log scale by adding "scaleType":"log" in the query.

{
    "database": "ChronAm",
    "plotType": "heatmap",
    "method": "return_json",
    "search_limits": {
        "word": ["bicycle"]
    },
    "aesthetic": {
        "x": "publish_year",
        "y": "publish_week_year",
        "color": "WordsPerMillion"
    }
}

{
    "database": "ChronAm",
    "plotType": "heatmap",
    "method": "return_json",
    "search_limits": {
    },
    "aesthetic": {
        "x": "publish_year",
        "y": "placeOfPublication_adminName1",
        "color": "TextCount"
    },
    "scaleType":"log"
}

Maps show usages of language on a map.

Zooming is not yet enabled: projections may not be the appropriate size for all screens.

• Required aesthetics

  • point: A geo point, typically created with the bookworm-geocode extension. The returned value if created by hand should be a JSON-encoded string like [79,150] of the format [lat,lon].

  • size: A quantity variable.

• Optional aesthetics

  • color: A quantity variable (WordCount, TotalWords, etc.)

  • time: Animate the map across years.

  • label: An text label to include in the list on mouseover.

• Other options

  • projection determines the base projection to use.

    • USA: The Albers USA

    • Europe: An Albers projection focused on Europe

    • azimuthal: An azimuthal projection centered on Africa.

    • boston: A Mercator projection for plotting the city of Boston.

    • mercator: A standard Mercator projection.

  • scaleType: By default linear; if log and aesthetic.color is defined, will change the appearance of the color scale.

{
    "database": "ChronAm",
    "projection": "USA",
    "plotType": "map",
    "method": "return_json",
    "search_limits": {
        "word": ["test"]
    },
    "aesthetic": {
        "size": "TotalWords",
        "point": "placeOfPublication_geo",
        "label": "publisher"
    }
}

Linecharts do not quite implement all the capacities of the linechart bookworm, but they make it much easier to represent a number of other useful linecharts.

Hover does not work: clicking does.

• Required aesthetics

  • x: A time or or other discrete linear variable

  • y: A counttype variable.

• Optional aesthetics

  • color: A categorical variable.

{
    "database": "ChronAm",
    "plotType": "linechart",
    "method": "return_json",
    "search_limits": {
    "title__id":{"$lte":15}
    },
    "aesthetic": {
        "x": "publish_year",
        "color": "title",
        "y": "TextCount"
    },
    "scaleType":"log"
}

Streamgraphs display quantities over time: they are pretty and give a sense of the dominant materials.

The implementation is imperfect. Interaction does not work, and large return quantities are automatically curtailed.

• Required aesthetics

  • x: A time or or other discrete linear variables

  • y: A counttype variable.

  • fill: A categorical variable: if there are more than 10 values, only the ten most common in the returned set will be used.

• Optional aesthetics

  • None

{
    "database": "ChronAm",
    "plotType": "streamgraph",
    "method": "return_json",
    "search_limits": {
    },
    "aesthetic": {
        "x": "publish_year",
        "fill": "placeOfPublication_adminName1",
        "y": "TextCount"
    },
    "scaleType":"log"
}

The layout used for rate my professors.

• x

• y

• color

• x

• y

Two-part comparisons: slopegraph and worddiv.

Needs lots of space. Uses a ‘ y ’ aesthetic to position words and a “label” aesthetic to display groups.

One of the few non-SVG based visualizations.

Other chart types (passim)