Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[David Wooten]

Greetings all,

I've been itching to stop using "Illustrator" and other programs to make 
the charts and graphs I wish to include in my ConTeXt-generated 
documents, and would like to get some advice on the matter.

There is a special (albeit not well furnished) place in my heart for 
Tufte's /"Visual Display of Quantitative Information/", so I suppose I 
am always leaning towards that philosophy of chart-making. I came across 
Jean-luc Doumont's article /"Drawing effective (and beautiful) graphs 
with TeX*" [1]/, in which he refers to his macro package called 
JLdraw---and shows some pretty examples. JLdraw was in fact never 
generally released, although when I contacted him he was happy to send 
along the macro package. In beginning to tinker with them, I have not 
had much luck getting them to work within ConTeXt, undoubtedly due to my 
persistent naiveté.

Thus I'm curious as to what others use... is R an efficient method to 
produce elegant charts? Is straight MetaPost preferable?

Many thanks,
David

[1] http://www.tug.org/TUG99-web/pdf/doumont2.pdf
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Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 7/21/06, David Wooten wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I've been itching to stop using "Illustrator" and other programs to make
> the charts and graphs I wish to include in my ConTeXt-generated
> documents, and would like to get some advice on the matter.
>
> There is a special (albeit not well furnished) place in my heart for
> Tufte's /"Visual Display of Quantitative Information/", so I suppose I
> am always leaning towards that philosophy of chart-making. I came across
> Jean-luc Doumont's article /"Drawing effective (and beautiful) graphs
> with TeX*" [1]/, in which he refers to his macro package called
> JLdraw---and shows some pretty examples. JLdraw was in fact never
> generally released, although when I contacted him he was happy to send
> along the macro package. In beginning to tinker with them, I have not
> had much luck getting them to work within ConTeXt, undoubtedly due to my
> persistent naiveté.
>
> Thus I'm curious as to what others use... is R an efficient method to
> produce elegant charts? Is straight MetaPost preferable?

With metapost you can surely achive most beautiful results and it is
not as difficult to learn as TeX-programming. Of course you might need
more time to draw what you need or to write your own set of macros,
but if you have high demands about quality this might be the way to
go.

However, if you prefer doing it quicly using the existing tools (be
aware that you have to learn how to use those tools as well), R or
gnuplot might be an interesting choice. You'll be limited by the power
of those two tools, but in most cases they should suffice for the
normal usage.

The gnuplot module is still in development (I've been just begging
Hans for help a few hours ago ;). Take a look at the demo section of
gnuplot (http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_4.1/) to see if it can
offer you what you want to do. In that case ask on the list again,
I'll give you further pointers how to use it with ConTeXt
(http://pub.mojca.org/gnuplot).

But basically you can take any program to draw graphs and include the
resulting PDFs. I'm afraid that the macros from the paper which you
pointed to, use some PostScript code that cannot be handled as-is (you
need some conversion to PDF first) and I'm affraid that the effort put
into making it work woudn't pay off now that you have a great varienty
of other plotting programs, including metapost itself (esp. if the
package has never been released - you'll probably hardly get any
support for it).

Mojca

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[David Wooten]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> Thus I'm curious as to what others use... is R an efficient method to
>> produce elegant charts? Is straight MetaPost preferable?
>>     
>
> With metapost you can surely achive most beautiful results and it is
> not as difficult to learn as TeX-programming. Of course you might need
> more time to draw what you need or to write your own set of macros,
> but if you have high demands about quality this might be the way to
> go.
>
> However, if you prefer doing it quicly using the existing tools (be
> aware that you have to learn how to use those tools as well), R or
> gnuplot might be an interesting choice. You'll be limited by the power
> of those two tools, but in most cases they should suffice for the
> normal usage.
>
> The gnuplot module is still in development (I've been just begging
> Hans for help a few hours ago ;). Take a look at the demo section of
> gnuplot (http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_4.1/) to see if it can
> offer you what you want to do. In that case ask on the list again,
> I'll give you further pointers how to use it with ConTeXt
> (http://pub.mojca.org/gnuplot).
>
> But basically you can take any program to draw graphs and include the
> resulting PDFs. I'm afraid that the macros from the paper which you
> pointed to, use some PostScript code that cannot be handled as-is (you
> need some conversion to PDF first) and I'm affraid that the effort put
> into making it work woudn't pay off now that you have a great varienty
> of other plotting programs, including metapost itself (esp. if the
> package has never been released - you'll probably hardly get any
> support for it).
>
> Mojca
>   
Thanks very much for your reply. Your advice seems strong, and in truth 
I have been intrigued by MetaPost for many years. This certainly seems a 
valid excuse to delve into it ;)

David

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[John R. Culleton]

On Friday 21 July 2006 15:22, David Wooten wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> >> Thus I'm curious as to what others use... is R an efficient method to
> >> produce elegant charts? Is straight MetaPost preferable?
> >
> > With metapost you can surely achive most beautiful results and it is
> > not as difficult to learn as TeX-programming. Of course you might need
> > more time to draw what you need or to write your own set of macros,
> > but if you have high demands about quality this might be the way to
> > go.
> >
> > However, if you prefer doing it quicly using the existing tools (be
> > aware that you have to learn how to use those tools as well), R or
> > gnuplot might be an interesting choice. You'll be limited by the power
> > of those two tools, but in most cases they should suffice for the
> > normal usage.
> >
> > The gnuplot module is still in development (I've been just begging
> > Hans for help a few hours ago ;). Take a look at the demo section of
> > gnuplot (http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_4.1/) to see if it can
> > offer you what you want to do. In that case ask on the list again,
> > I'll give you further pointers how to use it with ConTeXt
> > (http://pub.mojca.org/gnuplot).
> >
> > But basically you can take any program to draw graphs and include the
> > resulting PDFs. I'm afraid that the macros from the paper which you
> > pointed to, use some PostScript code that cannot be handled as-is (you
> > need some conversion to PDF first) and I'm affraid that the effort put
> > into making it work woudn't pay off now that you have a great varienty
> > of other plotting programs, including metapost itself (esp. if the
> > package has never been released - you'll probably hardly get any
> > support for it).
> >
> > Mojca
>
> Thanks very much for your reply. Your advice seems strong, and in truth
> I have been intrigued by MetaPost for many years. This certainly seems a
> valid excuse to delve into it ;)
>
> David
> _______________________________________________
> ntg-context mailing list
> ntg-context@ntg.nl
> http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
I have always found Pstricks to be very useful. There is a module
m-pstric.tex 
that you can look at. 
-- 
John Culleton
Able Indexing and Typesetting
Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost.
Satisfaction guaranteed. 
http://wexfordpress.com

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen]

David Wooten wrote:
> There is a special (albeit not well furnished) place in my heart for 
> Tufte's /"Visual Display of Quantitative Information/", so I suppose I 
>   
fyi: there is a new tufte book (don't have it yet but i'm told that it's 
nice too)

Hans

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              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
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Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Sanjoy Mahajan]

Hans writes:
> fyi: there is a new tufte book (don't have it yet but i'm told that it's 
> nice too)

It's _Beautiful Evidence_ (2006) and it is beautiful.  I think it was
typeset in Quark.  A few pages from the book, as well some of Tufte's
updates on the book's production, are here:

<http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000262&topic_id=1>

Can TeX/LaTeX/ConTexT-based typesetting can look as good?  Perhaps!
Towards the end of this thread
<http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000hB>,
there are well-designed documents typeset with LaTeX.  With MetaPost
they would look even better.  Maybe the ConTeXt community should add
to the thread examples of beautiful ConTeXt/Meta(Fun|Post)
documents...

-Sanjoy

`Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.'
         --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

Hi Sanjoy,

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 11:48:07 -0600, Sanjoy Mahajan <sanjoy@mrao.cam.ac.uk>  
wrote:

> It's _Beautiful Evidence_ (2006) and it is beautiful.  I think it was
> typeset in Quark.  A few pages from the book, as well some of Tufte's
> updates on the book's production, are here:
>
> <http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000262&topic_id=1>
>
> Can TeX/LaTeX/ConTexT-based typesetting can look as good?  Perhaps!

I'm curious: What is preventing ConTeXt in particular from looking this  
good?
What is the basis of your "Perhaps!"? What's missing?

Best
Idris

-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Sanjoy Mahajan]

> > Can TeX/LaTeX/ConTexT-based typesetting can look as good?  Perhaps!

> I'm curious: What is preventing ConTeXt in particular from looking
> this good?  What is the basis of your "Perhaps!"? What's missing?

Mostly my lack of skill with ConTeXt, but the experts could say for
sure.  A likely trouble spot is automatic figure placement.
Positioning involves compromising competing criteria: keep figures
next to the text that references them (the ideal), but it may not fit.
So failing that, keep it on the same page, or at least on the same
double-page spread.  Otherwise, on the next page.  

But where you put one figure will affect the placement of later
figures.  And maybe you paint yourself into a corner, and would like
to backtrack and sacrifice excellent earlier placements in order to
minimize terrible placements now...

So the engine should typeset a document one chapter at a time (figures
should never cross chapter boundaries).  TeX does "one page and a bit"
at a time, so fully automatic placement is difficult to program (and
always tricky to use since it involves lots of hinting).

Instead of doing it automatically, you can give a lot of help to the
program, which is probably what you have to do with Quark.

-Sanjoy

`Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.'
         --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Hans Hagen]

Sanjoy Mahajan wrote:
> But where you put one figure will affect the placement of later
> figures.  And maybe you paint yourself into a corner, and would like
> to backtrack and sacrifice excellent earlier placements in order to
> minimize terrible placements now...
>   
http://www.nieuwarchief.nl/serie5/index.php

gives some examplex of more complex layouts (done with a pretty old context btw); this is why column sets shows up (they will be used in future renderings) 

Hans 

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                          Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
              Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
     tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                             | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Sanjoy Mahajan]

> http://www.nieuwarchief.nl/serie5/index.php

Thanks, lots of elegant layouts there, and enjoyable mathematics!

-Sanjoy

`Never underestimate the evil of which men of power are capable.'
         --Bertrand Russell, _War Crimes in Vietnam_, chapter 1.

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

David Wooten wrote:

> Thus I'm curious as to what others use... is R an efficient method to
> produce elegant charts?

Yes! R (especially using the new grid and lattice framework) produces
excellent charts and graphs, with very sensible default options (much
of it based on Cleveland’s research).

There are packages for most common and not-so-common stasticial graphs, but
it is not difficult to create your own from scratch, either, or to modify
existing ones.

For an example of the various graphics possible to create with R, try these
commands (at an R prompt):

library(lattice)                       # Load the ‘lattice’ package¹.
grid::grid.prompt(TRUE); par(ask=TRUE) # Pause between each graphic.
example(xyplot)                        # Many nice lattice graphs.
demo(lattice)                          # More lattice graphs.
demo(graphics)                         # Example of non-lattice graphs.

You may also want to take a look at the R Graph Gallery:
http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/

¹ Which is basically ‘trellis for R’; see
  http://stat.bell-labs.com/project/trellis/.

-- 
Karl Ove Hufthammer
E-mail and Jabber: karl@huftis.org

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Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Nicolas Grilly]

Karl Ove Hufthammer <karloh@mi.uib.no> wrote:
> Yes! R (especially using the new grid and lattice framework) produces
> excellent charts and graphs, with very sensible default options (much
> of it based on Cleveland's research).

What is Cleveland's research? Can you provide references on the web?

Thank you,

Nicolas Grilly

Re: Charts, Graphs, Tufte, and ConTeXt

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Nicolas Grilly skreiv:

> Karl Ove Hufthammer <karloh@mi.uib.no> wrote:
>> Yes! R (especially using the new grid and lattice framework) produces
>> excellent charts and graphs, with very sensible default options (much
>> of it based on Cleveland's research).
> 
> What is Cleveland's research? Can you provide references on the web?

Cleveland has done much research on graphical perception and the visual
decoding of information from data displays. He was one of the first to do
actual scientific study on this.

Earlier, many people had opinions on various common graphs (e.g., ‘pie
charts are bad – I don’t like them’). Cleveland came along and did actual
scientific *experiments* to show why some type of graphs were worse than
others for presenting data (e.g., ‘humans are very bad at judging angles
and very good at judging position along a common scale; that’s why pie
charts are terrible and dot plots good at presenting (the same) data’),
and he proposed new graphical display *based* on this research.

See for example this very interesting and easy to read article:

Title:               Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and
                     Application to the Development of Graphical Methods
Author(s):           William S. Cleveland; Robert McGill
Source:              Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 79,
                     No. 387. (Sep., 1984), pp. 531-554.
Stable URL:         
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0162-1459%28198409%2979%3A387%3C531%3AGPTEAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

Some of Cleveland’s research resulted in novel graphical displays, such as
trellis displays, coplots and dot plots, and much of it resulted in
improvements to common displays. Unfortunately, many of these smaller
improvements and very minor but important details seems to be unknown to
people who design graphing software. Let me mention a few (not too
exciting) examples:

Circles should be used instead of rectangles as plotting symbols, especially
with data overlap, because overlapping rectangles still look like
rectangles, while overlapping circles look nothing like circles. Cleveland
actually recommended a list of plotting symbols (for plotting several
groups in one plot) for use in scatterplots; see:

Title:               A Model for Studying Display Methods of Statistical
                     Graphics
Author(s):           William S. Cleveland
Source:              Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Vol. 2,
                     No. 4. (Dec., 1993), pp. 323-343.
Stable URL:         
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1061-8600%28199312%292%3A4%3C323%3AAMFSDM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

Tick marks should point outwards, not inwards (so they don’t camouflage
data).

The data rectangle should always be slightly smaller than the scale-line
rectangle (the box around the data), again to avoid camouflaging the data.

These are just a few (perhaps less interesting) features of graph design
that R does correctly, but many other programs (e.g., gnuplot, at least for
tick marks and data rectangles) don’t (by default).

Much of Cleveland’s research has been summarised in his excellent book

W.S. Cleveland. Elements of Graphing Data. Revised edition. 1994.

See also his other book

W.S. Cleveland. Visualizing data. 1993.

Other articles of his that may be of interest:

Title:               Graphical Perception and Graphical Methods for Analyzing
                     Scientific Data
Author(s):           William S. Cleveland; Robert McGill
Source:              Science, New Series, Vol. 229, No. 4716. (Aug. 30, 1985),
                     pp. 828-833.
Stable URL:         
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-8075%2819850830%293%3A229%3A4716%3C828%3AGPAGMF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
Abstract:            Graphical perception is the visual decoding of the
                     quantitative and qualitative information encoded on
                     graphs. Recent investigations have uncovered basic
                     principles of human graphical perception that have
                     important implications for the display of data. The
                     computer graphics revolution has stimulated the invention
                     of many graphical methods for analyzing and presenting
                     scientific data, such as box plots, two-tiered error bars,
                     scatterplot smoothing, dot charts, and graphing on a log
                     base 2 scale.



Title:               Graphical Perception: The Visual Decoding of Quantitative
                     Information on Graphical Displays of Data
Author(s):           William S. Cleveland; Robert McGill
Source:              Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A
                     (General), Vol. 150, No. 3. (1987), pp. 192-229.
Stable URL:         
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0035-9238%281987%29150%3A3%3C192%3AGPTVDO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T
Abstract:            Studies in graphical perception, both theoretical and
                     experimental, provide a scientific foundation for the
                     construction area of statistical graphics. From these
                     studies a paradigm that has important applications for
                     practice has begun to emerge. The paradigm is based on
                     elementary codes: Basic geometric and textural aspects of
                     a graph that encode the quantitative information. The
                     methodology that can be invoked to study graphical
                     perception is illustrated by an investigation of the shape
                     parameter of a two-variable graph, a topic that has had
                     much discussion, but little scientific study, for at least
                     70 years.



Title:               The Many Faces of a Scatterplot
Author(s):           William S. Cleveland; Robert McGill
Source:              Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 79,
                     No. 388. (Dec., 1984), pp. 807-822.
Stable URL:         
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0162-1459%28198412%2979%3A388%3C807%3ATMFOAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G
Abstract:            The scatterplot is one of our most powerful tools for data
                     analysis. Still, we can add graphical information to
                     scatterplots to make them considerably more powerful.
                     These graphical additions, faces of sorts, can enhance
                     capabilities that scatterplots already have or can add
                     whole new capabilities that faceless scatterplots do not
                     have at all. The additions we discuss here-some new and
                     some old-are (a) sunflowers, (b) category codes, (c) point
                     cloud sizings, (d) smoothings for the dependence of $y$ on
                     $x$ (middle smoothings, spread smoothings, and upper and
                     lower smoothings), and (e) smoothings for the bivariate
                     distribution of $x$ and $y$ (pairs of middle smoothings,
                     sum-difference smoothings, scale-ratio smoothings, and
                     polar smoothings). The development of these additions is
                     based in part on a number of graphical principles that can
                     be applied to the development of statistical graphics in
                     general.

-- 
Karl Ove Hufthammer


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