Exploring Advanced Visuals

In our previous lesson, we mastered the core principles of data storytelling, focusing on clarity and empathy. Now, it’s time to expand our toolkit with more sophisticated visualizations. These charts go beyond simple comparisons to help us uncover intricate relationships, and powerful trends hidden within our data.

Bubbled scatterplots

A bubble chart builds on the standard scatterplot by adding a third dimension to our view. Each point on the chart is a bubble, and the size of that bubble is determined by a third variable. This allows us to visualize the relationship between three different sets of numbers at once, giving us a much richer story than a standard two-variable plot.

For example, we could plot sales on the y-axis and advertising spend on the x-axis, with the bubble size representing the number of new customers. A single chart can show whether high ad spending leads to both higher sales and more new customers.

Creating a bubble chart in Google Sheets

We can create a bubble chart in Google Sheets by selecting our data and choosing the bubble chart option. Let’s walk through the steps with a practical example.

1. We’ll arrange our data in three columns to show the relationship between Sales, Ad spend, and New customers.

2. Highlight the range of cells containing our data, including the headers. For the example above, we would select the range C5:E10.

3. Go to “Insert” > “Chart.”

4. In the “Chart editor” sidebar, select bubble chart from the “Chart type” drop-down. Then, use the “Size” drop-down to select the column through which we want to represent the bubble size (e.g., third column). ... ...