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