Why bi visibility matters
October 3rd, 2024
4 min
Datawrapper lets you show your data as beautiful charts, maps or tables with a few clicks. Find out more about all the available visualization types.
Our mission is to help everyone communicate with data - from newsrooms to global enterprises, non-profits or public service.
We want to enable everyone to create beautiful charts, maps, and tables. New to data visualization? Or do you have specific questions about us? You'll find all the answers here.
Data vis best practices, news, and examples
250+ articles that explain how to use Datawrapper
Answers to common questions
An exchange place for Datawrapper visualizations
Attend and watch how to use Datawrapper best
Learn about available positions on our team
Our latest small and big improvements
Build your integration with Datawrapper's API
Get in touch with us – we're happy to help
This article is brought to you by Datawrapper, a data visualization tool for creating charts, maps, and tables. Learn more.
I did not know Germany as a country where wildfires are a problem. But this year, it felt like they’re starting to become one. Although there have been wildfires in Germany every summer, this year alone we’ve had two record months in the last seven years: There were more than 500 fires spotted by NASA satellites in Germany in April and July.
Still, countries like the US experience far worse; more than 70k fires alone this year. And the Republic of Congo, which is almost exactly as big as Germany, had to deal with six times as many wildfires so far this year.
The chart above is a chameleon: Already in the past, we’ve created dot plots and line charts with Datawrapper scatterplots. Today, we made a column chart with an area chart. Why would we do this? Because the Datawrapper area chart is way better at displaying date labels (like months or years) in the correct intervals than our column chart.
This possibility of creating a chart type with another one reveals that there are often no clear boundaries between chart types. A dot plot with enough rows becomes a scatter plot. A scatter plot with enough dots on a line becomes a line chart. A line chart that is filled with a color below the line becomes an area chart. And an area chart with stepped interpolation becomes a column chart. We can push the boundaries of chart types…to then walk into the boundaries of another chart type, or into completely new territory.
As always, you can hover over the chart and click on “Edit this chart” in the top right to see how we’ve created it. I’ll see you next week!
Comments