There is another bar chart solution with 2 dimensions and 1 measure, namely a stacked bar.Ī similar view is produced by combining treemaps and bar chart to create a bar chart where each bar is a treemap itself. Still, can you tell if East or West is bigger in total if you do not know the second biggest region should appear below the first one and the third one on the right? What the treemap does well is organizing the cells (region-product category combinations) by regions in a descending order. Individual region-product category combinations are still more accurately shown on the bar chart. We may also use the higher level dimension on color to visually group the marks. Let’s move on to including 2 dimensions and 1 measure in the view. Also, later on the variants with an additional measure on color button are not discussed as the number of dimensions will be more important for us. I quit the case of 1 dimension and 2 measures as the second measure is used only for coloring the treemap. The order of Product Sub-Categories is clearer in the bar chart and the differences between the individual values are also better displayed. Let’s see the basic variant, 1 dimension and 1 measure: Product Sub-Category and Sales. Although I did not color anything in terms of the ‘strength’ of the chart, bar charts can be further flavoured with a running total line on dual axis (moving towards a Pareto chart) that results in a slight edge over a treemap even in this case.Ĭoncluding the advantages of the bar chart, the next logical question is: can we always replace a treemap with an equivalent bar chart? Let’s try…Ī treemap is created from 1 or more dimensions, 1 or 2 measures. My green/red coloring stands for having an advantage/disadvantage. Treemaps vs bar charts – what are the differences? So much for now about the theory of treemaps, let’s see if they stand a chance compared to bar charts… (All the charts will be built on the ‘Superstore data’ provided with Tableau Desktop and will be using consistently the Sales measure for the sake of simpicity.)Ī) Simple, ‘part-to-whole’ treemap (1 dimension only, now Region)ī) Nested treemap (more dimensions, now Region & Product Category) Let’s see now an example of a treemap showing part-to-whole relationships and a nested treemap from hierarchical data. So the size, and thus the position of a rectangle that contains other rectangles is determined by the sum of the areas of the contained rectangles. In case of hierarchical data – when the rectangles are nested -, the same ordering of the lower level rectangles is repeated within each higher level rectangle in the treemap. The rectangles in the treemap range in size from the top left corner of the chart to the bottom right corner, with the largest rectangle positioned in the top left corner and the smallest rectangle in the bottom right corner. Nested rectangles mean that hierarchy levels in the data are expressed by larger rectangles (above in the hierarchy) containing smaller ones (below in the hierarchy). The space in the view is divided into rectangles that are sized and ordered by a measure. In case of hierarchical (tree-structured) data these rectangles are nested. A treemap is a chart type that displays hierarchical or part-to-whole relationships via rectangles. $(document).16 December, 2014 Treemap vs Bar chart – The end of Treemapīar charts are surely well know but let’s spend a few words on treemaps now.
#Treemap chart examples how to#
The following example demonstrates how to define a TreeMap by using a selector within $(document).ready().