Chapter 6
Visualizing Relationships
Statistics is about finding relationships in data. What are the similarities between groups? Within groups? Within subgroups? The relationship that most people are familiar with for statistics is correlation. For example, as average height goes up in a population, most likely average weight will go up, too. This is a simple positive correlation. The relationships in your data, just like in real life, can get more complicated though as you consider more factors or find patterns that aren’t so linear. This chapter discusses how to use visualization to find such relationships and highlight them for storytelling.
As you get into more complex statistical graphics, you can make heavy use of R in this chapter and the next. This is where the open-source software shines. Like in previous chapters, R does the grunt work, and then you can use Illustrator to make the graphic more readable for an audience.
