The Mathematics behind Radar Charts
How to time-proof your data visualisation skillset using the foundation of all other technologies
As technologies are flowing in and out of favour more rapidly than ever before, it becomes harder to keep up. Fortunately, although technologies are always changing, mathematics does not.
By developing our understanding of data visualisation to include this lower level of abstraction we can massively improve our ability to remain fluid and move between technologies, time-proofing our skills.
Deliberate practice (see here) is an essential skill in any creative pursuit and is a common habit of high-achievers. We will start our deliberate practice with a simple but elegant radar chart.
The radar (or spider) chart is particularly useful for presenting multivariate data that does not necessarily share the same scale. They are great for visualising commonality or outliers, or to compare metrics for multiple entities (such as performance metrics for several business units).
Theory
The math and geometry required for a radar chart is incredibly simple and transferable between many technologies, such as Tableau or D3.js. Before we start, I will summarise the symbols we will be using.
