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This is interesting for me - I think there is a lot of space to develop visualizations that highlight the seasonality of events. At work, I am often asked to t

This is interesting for me - I think there is a lot of space to develop visualizations that highlight the seasonality of events. At work, I am often asked to tell stories with data where periodic or seasonal behavior plays a major role. Something like this is definitely improves in many ways over a 7-day moving average or a YoY line chart, but I can't help but feel that there are even more powerful options waiting to be discovered.

User23 6y ago
Seasonality is huge at Amazon. And it depends on the nation too. US, Japan, and EU states all have wildly different seasonalities. Seasonality here should be construed at all levels. For example on a daily basis Japanese peak is after the work day ends, while US has a flatter curve since Americans are willing to shop online during their work day. And then there are special events like the world cup flatlining EU purchasing while US is unaffected.
hawktheslayer 6y ago
I would argue that while this type of visualization is good for data discovery, it demands too much cognative load for the average audience, at least where I work. YoY line charts or even bar graphs though mundane, require no extra mental effort to the reader and so I find to be more effective in persuasive storytelling.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  There are cases in the post’s examples that wouldn’t be achievable with YoY. There’s a lot more information in the spiral presentation, even if it’s fairly fuzzy/low fidelity. They did suggest pairing it with more conventional visualizations, so it’s probably most useful for finding detail that wouldn’t jump out in those viz with common parameters and tweaking the bounds to highlight those.
jamessb 6y ago
You might find Cycle Plots [1, 2] useful. [1]: https://www.cvast.tuwien.ac.at/topics/cycle-plot-climate-data https://www.cvast.tuwien.ac.at/topics/cycle-plot-climate-dat... [2]: https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/guests/intro_to_cycle_plots.pdf https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/guests/intro_to_cycl...

User23 6y ago

Seasonality is huge at Amazon. And it depends on the nation too. US, Japan, and EU states all have wildly different seasonalities. Seasonality here should be construed at all levels. For example on a daily basis Japanese peak is after the work day ends, while US has a flatter curve since Americans are willing to shop online during their work day. And then there are special events like the world cup flatlining EU purchasing while US is unaffected.

hawktheslayer 6y ago

I would argue that while this type of visualization is good for data discovery, it demands too much cognative load for the average audience, at least where I work. YoY line charts or even bar graphs though mundane, require no extra mental effort to the reader and so I find to be more effective in persuasive storytelling.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
There are cases in the post’s examples that wouldn’t be achievable with YoY. There’s a lot more information in the spiral presentation, even if it’s fairly fuzzy/low fidelity. They did suggest pairing it with more conventional visualizations, so it’s probably most useful for finding detail that wouldn’t jump out in those viz with common parameters and tweaking the bounds to highlight those.

jamessb 6y ago

You might find Cycle Plots [1, 2] useful. [1]: https://www.cvast.tuwien.ac.at/topics/cycle-plot-climate-data https://www.cvast.tuwien.ac.at/topics/cycle-plot-climate-dat... [2]: https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/guests/intro_to_cycle_plots.pdf https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/guests/intro_to_cycl...