Small multiples

From Business Intelligence

History of a storm. Project management graphics

Departmental salary expenses. Wikipedia: Small multiples

Micrograph small multiples on a dashboard. The BoxTone Dashboard and the BlackBerry Outage

Description

Also known as linked multiples. This design solution features many small visualizations tiled against each other to show small variations in the data. This can be done as a 2D matrix or linearly. This allows the user to see slices of the data set and compare side-by-side more easily than could be done with switching back and forth between images.

Usage

• Use this to display a large, multivariate data set, and to enable quick visual comparisons
• Each image must use the same size, measure and scale
• Too many small images (such as 100 sequential images) can be cumbersome

Resources

• Small multiple, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_multiple> 
• Graphics design based on Edward Tufte’s principles, University of Washington, <https://www.washington.edu/computing/training/561/zz-tufte.html#Small%20Multiples> 
• Edward R. Tufte (1990), “Small Multiples”, Envisioning Information, Graphics Press LLC 
• Edward R. Tufte (2001), “Data Density and Small Multiples”, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press LLC 
• Land Use example, <http://www.personal.psu.edu/wsg116/484/final/section7/choropleth-sml-mult/484final_section7_sml_mult.html>  (could be used for university property)