Sparklines, Google Charts
Jul 30, 05:32 PM
I love sparklines, and when Google Charts added sparklines to their API a few months ago, I vowed to use them more often. But then I didn’t.
This post is a reminder of why I like them. Invented by Edward Tufte, they are “intense, simple, wordlike graphics.” I like them so much because they can be used contextually within a sentence. For example:
A very common pattern we see in historgrams of player engagement in MMOs shows a large number of players who have spent 1-2 hours with the game, followed by a characteristic decrease in numbers as we look at players who have spent increasing numbers of hours:
. This is a healthy sign for a game in its early stages, but ideally we would like to see the curve bulge to the right slightly over time
.
(Although my CSS pretty much entirely screws it up here. Damn)(Thanks, Darren!)
In other Google Charts news, I’ve recently discovered a few tools to help you create GCharts: Chartpart and Google Chart Generator are both pretty simple but effective. However, Google Chart Creator has a stunningly good UI and lots of customization options, making it my GChart helper tool of choice.
