Visualizing relationships in your data

When you need to show relationships in your data, you are usually talking about plotting two or more variables in a chart to visualize their level of dependency. A scatter plot is probably the most common type of chart to show the relationship between two variables. Figure 5.1 shows a scatter plot for two variables, X and Y.

Figure 5.1 – Plotting relationships with a scatter plot

Figure 5.1 shows a clear relationship between X and Y. As X increases, Y also increases. In this particular case, you can say that there is a linear relationship between both variables. Keep in mind that scatter plots may also catch other types of relationships, not only linear ones. For example, it would also be possible to find an exponential relationship between the two variables.

Another nice chart to make comparisons with is the bubble chart. Just like a scatter plot, it will also show the relationship between variables...