The treemap is a relatively recent invention (early 1990s) to visualize hierarchical data in an easily perceptible proportionate way, making efficient use of space. Ben Shneiderman's account of the development of the tree map (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/) shows how worthwhile it is to always look for new ways to visualize data.

In just a few quick steps, you can create a Treemap visualization with Spotfire and add the additional dimension of color to the visualization. A good example of the use of a treemap is the visualization of international gross domestic product (GDP) figures. We're going to take figures published by the World Bank for 2013 (http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/GDP-ranking-table), with some added regional classification, and plot them as a treemap. You can download the data file you need, GDP_Data.csv, from http://www.insidespotfire.com.