Relating parts of the data to the whole

As you explore and analyze data, you'll often want to understand how various parts add up to a whole. For example, you'll ask questions such as the following:

• How much does each electric generation method (wind, solar, coal, and nuclear) contribute to the total amount of energy produced?
• What percentage of total profit is made in each state?
• How much space does each file, subdirectory, and directory occupy on my hard disk?

These types of questions are asking about the relationship between the part (production method, state, file/directory) and the whole (total energy, national sales, and hard disk). There are several types of visualizations and variations that can aid you in your analysis.

Let's now look at some visualization examples that will aid us as we consider how to show part-to-whole relationships.

Stacked bars

We took a look at stacked bars in Chapter 1, Taking Off with Tableau...