Relating parts of the data to the whole
As you explore and analyze data, you'll often want to understand how various parts add up to a whole. For example, you'll ask questions like these:
How many patients with different admission statuses (in-patient, out-patient, observation, or ER) make up the entire population of patients in the hospital?
What is the percentage of total national sales made in each state?
How much space does each file, subdirectory, and directory take on my hard disk?
These types of questions ask about the relationship between the part (patient type, state, or file/directory) and the whole (the entire patient population, national sales, and hard disk). There are several types of visualizations and variations that can aid you in your analysis.
Stacked bars
We took a look at stacked bars in Chapter 1, Creating Your First Visualizations and Dashboard, where we noted one significant drawback: it is difficult to compare values across categories for any but the bottom-most bar (for...
