Data Visualization - Bubble Charts

Problem

When you have a table with 3 related dimensions of data, how do you represent it on a flat 2D chart?

Solution

Bubble charts plot data defined in terms of three distinct numeric parameters. They allow the comparison of entities in terms of their relative positions with respect to each numeric axis and their size as well.

Why

A bubble chart is used to visualize a data set with two to four dimensions. Bubble charts show two groups of numbers as a series of XY coordinates. A third set of numbers indicates the size of each datapoint, or bubble. Bubble charts show the relatedness of three different sets of values. Bubble charts can be considered a variation of the scatter plot, in which the data points are replaced with bubbles.