Choosing a circular barplot
Very often, it happens that we need to represent the measures associated with various categorical entities using a bar chart (or barplot). However, when the number of entities to be represented exceeds 15 or 20, the graph starts to become unreadable, even though you arrange it vertically:
Figure 15.1 – A barplot of worldwide weapons sellers
In this case, as you have already seen in Chapter 14, Exploratory Data Analysis, it is often a good idea to represent a maximum number of entities, after which the subsequent individual entities are grouped into a single category (in our case, the Others category). In this way, the readability of the graph is preserved, but part of the information you want to represent is lost.
If it is strictly necessary to display all entities with their measure, we often resort to a more eye-catching organization of the space occupied by the barplot, wrapping it in a circular shape, thus obtaining...
