Line charts are commonly used for visualizing time-series data, that is, data that changes over time. Their main purpose is to identify a trend in continuous data. Some examples could be to visualize the following:
- Population trends over time
- Sensor readings from manufacturing equipment
- Sales/production data over time
In fact, line charts are also one of the most commonly used visualizations for streaming (live) data. Streaming data was introduced in Spotfire X, and will be covered further in Chapter 12, Scaling the Infrastructure; Keeping Data up to Date:
- Good for visualizing: Time-series data, or data where one variable changes in response to another.
- Don't use for: Visualizing lots and lots of time series simultaneously—you'll get a very confused picture of the data! Please don't use line charts with a categorical x-axis (unless that category...