Linear and radial parallel coordinates

For the representing multi-dimensional data

Linear parallel coordinates

• a comparison of multiple car specifications
• scores on baseball players

Radial coordinates / star plots

• product or skill comparison examples

• a comparison of two sample multi-vitamins as percentage of daily intake

• a comparison of car features

Uses

Advantages:

• allows assessment of symmetry of the values rather than to compare magnitudes
• data is circular intuitively / by convention
• visually interesting

Disadvantages:

• Generally less intuitive / more difficult to read than a bar graph
• Doesn't impose uniform scale along multiple axes
• Difficult to compare values along non-adjacent axes
• Difficulty in properly labelling axes
• Shapes distracting from read of data

Combines circular connections between axis values and straight line connections. Order / relationship between countries over emphasized. Suffers from occlusion (part of the visualization obscures another part.)

Same data in a bar graph: