Trellis Visualizations


Trellised visualizations enable you to quickly recognize similarities or differences between different categories in the data. Each individual panel in a trellis visualization displays a subset of the original data table, where the subsets are defined by the categories available in a column or hierarchy.

For example, if you choose to trellis a visualization based on the two variables "Gender" and "Political affiliation", this will result in four separate panels representing the combinations Female-Republican, Female-Democrat, Male-Republican, and Male-Democrat. If the "Gender" variable is used in conjunction with another variable that has five different values, this will yield ten panels. From this follows that variables with a continuous distribution and a wide range of values (for example, Real values) should be binned before they are used to form a trellis visualization. Otherwise the number of panels quickly becomes unmanageable.  

Example:

This is a standard non-trellised scatter plot:

trellis-none.png

By trellising this visualization based on Gender and Political affiliation, it will look like this:

trellis-panels.png

  1. Select the visualization you want to trellis.

  2. Right-click on the visualization and select Properties.

  3. Select Trellis.

  4. Select the Rows and Columns you want to trellis by.

  5. Specify additional trellis parameters, and click Close.

See also:

Visualization Properties - Trellis