This section introduces more advanced vector styling features, building on the basics we saw in Chapter 2, Viewing Spatial Data. We will see how to use graduated styles, categorized styles, and rulebased styles.
Graduated styles are great to visualize distributions of numeric values in a choropleth map or similar. In our sample data, there is a climate.shp file, which contains locations and mean temperature values that we can visualize using a graduated style by simply selecting the value T_F_MEAN for the Column field and clicking on Classify. We can pick an existing Color ramp field or create a new one by scrolling down the list to the New color ramp… entry. Graduated styles are available in different classification modes as follows: