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Grables: Visual Displays That Combine the Best Attributes of Graphs and Tables

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Tables

Abstract

A grable combines the emergent features of a graph with the precise quantities of a table into a single display. Its purpose is to accommodate a wider variety of visual tasks and a possibly wider audience, than either a graph or a table can address alone. The best principles of visual perception from both graph and table design and construction should be considered when designing and constructing grables. We present some proposed visual and cognitive strengths and weaknesses of graphs and tables, the visual tasks that each is best suited for, and some specific guidelines for their design and construction. We use these guidelines and principles of perception to design and construct a variety of grables. We also provide some general guidelines for software selection.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Christine Stocklin for her indispensible help in creating the grables using an S-PLUS GUI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Medicine Statistics, Merck Research Labs (UG 1D-44), 1000, 351 North Sumneytown Pike, North Wales, PA, 19454, USA

    Thomas E. Bradstreet

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  1. Thomas E. Bradstreet
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Correspondence to Thomas E. Bradstreet .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Pharmacology, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Gewerbestr. 16, Allschwil, 4123, Switzerland

    Andreas Krause

  2. Tibco Software Inc., Broadway 632, New York, 10012, New York, USA

    Michael O'Connell

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Bradstreet, T.E. (2012). Grables: Visual Displays That Combine the Best Attributes of Graphs and Tables. In: Krause, A., O'Connell, M. (eds) A Picture is Worth a Thousand Tables. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5329-1_3

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