Solved – Bar plots with variable bases (intensive and extensive variables at once)

barplotdata visualizationterminology

Is there a particular name for bar plots, in which bars are rectangular, with unequal bases?

That is:

  • width represents size (e.g. population),
  • height represents intensive variable (e.g. CO$_2$ emission per capita),
  • area represents extensive variable (e.g. total CO$_2$ emission).

Example (from David JC MacKay, "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air", page 14):

CO2 emission rate by country

In the same vein: this and that.
Another one: "Real GDP Per Capita and Shares of Global Population" (found here):

enter image description here

I find these plots immensely useful, as they show both the local effect (is a country particularly rich, polluting, militaristic…) and the global share (of economy/pollution/military power).

I have even made one: Research publications per capita? – Academia.SE. I care for its name both to search for examples, plotting libraries/functions etc, and to propagate this way of presenting data.

Best Answer

Apparently they are called cascade charts, see:

As a bonus, ggplot2: Variable Width Column Chart.

However, sometimes cascade chart is used as a synonymous of waterfall chart (which is a different thing from the discussed above), see e.g.:

In any case, judging for length I needed to get this answer, this name may be not that popular even among people creating similar bar plots (and perhaps a descriptive way may be better).

As was pointed out by @NickCox, if bars are sorted by their height, it is a discrete variant of the Lorenz curve.

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