Getting to know Plotly
Plotly (plot.ly) will be used to build the graphs and charts that are part of the tools built in this chapter. It's important to understand some fundamental concepts of how Plotly works before getting started.
Plotly is a cloud service specializing in data visualization and statistical analysis. Using Plotly's web-based interface, it is possible to upload data in various formats, including Microsoft Excel and Access, CSV, TSV, Matlab, and spreadsheets from Google Drive. Once imported, the web interface can then be used to create various types of visualization, including bar and pie charts, line graphs, scatter plots, area charts, histograms, box plots, heat maps (not GIS-based heat maps), and others. These visualizations can then be shared with others. The following screenshot depicts the web interface for Plotly:
In addition to the web-based interface, there are several programming languages that can be used to dynamically create visualizations without first...
