Exploring Cheat Sheets for Data Visualization Techniques

Abstract

A cheat sheet is a set of concise graphical and textual explanations, inspired by infographics, data comics, and cheat sheets in other domains. Cheat sheets aim to support learning, teaching, and the regular use of both common and novel visualization techniques in a variety of contexts. To design cheat sheets for visualization techniques, we describe four components of a cheat sheet: anatomy, visual patterns, pitfalls and introduction and show examples for three visualization techniques. Our cheat sheets address the increasing need for accessible material that supports understanding data visualization techniques, their use, their fallacies and so forth by a larger audience