How to Create a Bubble Chart

Bubble charts are a type of scatterplot that also includes varying sizes for the points. This lets you visualize more data (i.e. x-coordinate, y-coordinate, and size) all on the same chart. You can also color code your bubble charts to include even more information. This article describes how to create a bubble chart:

Requirements

You will need:

• Either
  1. At least three variables. One of which needs to be Numeric to use as the size of the bubble. 
  2. A table(s) of data where the 1st column is the x coordinates, 2nd column is the y coordinates, 3rd column is the size, and 4th column is the categories or values for the colors, see Technical Notes below for more info.

Method

In this example, we will create a bubble chart from variables directly.

1. Select the Visualization icon > Bubble > Bubble.
2. Click onto the page to place the visualization.
3. From the object inspector, go to Data > Data Source and select either an existing output on a Page (such as a table or R output) in the Output in 'Pages' drop-down, or select the variables from your Data Sources tree to represent the X coordinates and Y coordinates. 
4. Select the variable(s) from your Data Sources tree to represent Labels, Sizes, and/or Colors for your bubbles. For the example above, I've setup my Data Source to be as follows:
   
5. Click Calculate to get the basic bubble chart from above. 
6. Optional: You can change the scale of the bubbles via the Chart > Appearance > Treat sizes variable as > Diameter (it defaults to Area).
7. Optional: You can change the colors to be on a numeric gradient scale by changing Chart > Appearance > Treat colors variable as > Numeric and setting a desired Data Series > Color palette. More examples of color customizations is in How to Create a Scatter Plot.
8. Optional: You can label each point by dragging a variable to the Data > Data Source > Labels field and changing Chart > Appearance > Appearance > Show labels > On chart. You can modify the label font and the number of labels shown in the Chart > Data Labels section. You can drag labels around to reposition them if wanted. This positioning will be remembered upon recalculation, but reset if the data changes.
9. Optional: You can use other options on the Chart tab to further customize the colors, fonts, axes, hover, legends, and plot area. You can also add lines with arrows, trend lines, annotations, and quadrants. A list of other specific customization articles for Scatter charts are listed under Next below, including How to Create a Quad Chart.

Technical Notes

See our technical documentation for Visualization - Scatter - Scatter for more detail on the various formats accepted by scatterplots and bubble charts. The same graph above can be created using a table with the 1st column for the x coordinates, 2nd column for the y coordinates, 3rd column for the size, and 4th column for the categories or values for the colors. Since we are plotting the data for each respondent in the dataset using variables above, the table we create would be the raw data for those variables, but you can use aggregated tables as inputs as well. 

Next

How to Create a Scatter Plot

How to Create a Quad Chart

How to Create an Importance vs Performance Scatterplot in Displayr

How to Set the Axis Increments When Using a Scatter