feature request: person-shaped marker option for dotplots and scatterplots

[Andrew Ross]

I’m reading a report from the Urban Institute:
Do No Harm Guide: Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization Jonathan Schwabish, Alice Feng

June 9, 2021
In its section 03 page 7 (quote below), it mentions the idea of sometimes showing person-shaped icons on a graph instead of more generic shapes. This would be especially nice if each case was info from one person, of course.
So a feature request is: add an option in the paintbrush/Format dialog for a graph to use a person-shape instead of a circle for anything that currently uses circles.
Perhaps the “Fuse dots into bars” could also change to “Fuse markers into bars” since markers is more generic than dots.

quote from the report:

“Unit charts and dot plots, which use multiple repeated
shapes to depict the data, might offer more opportunity
to connect with the subject by reminding readers of the
number of people represented, particularly if each dot
represents one person.
Taking this thinking one step further, the use of icons
instead of abstract shapes such as circles and rectangles
may also improve the ability of readers to empathize by
reinforcing that they are looking at people and not just
numbers or statistics. As Tim Meko from the Washington
Post told us, “These are not just data points, and so
when you add them as dots on a map, or lines on a
chart, I think you have to remember that these are true
people.” Graphics that specifically represent people—the
anthropomorphizing of data graphics, or, as Jeremy Boy
and colleagues refer to it, anthropographics (Boy et al.
2014)—is sometimes seen as a way to evoke empathy
(though Boy and his coauthors do not find this to be the
case; see also Groeger 2014). An example of a stacked bar
chart compared with a unit chart that uses icons is shown
in figure 2”

[Bill Finzer]

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for this excellent excerpt and suggestion. We originally planned to provide this, following the example of TinkerPlots but, somehow, we never got around to it. I’ll write a feature request and link to your post!

Bill

[Author]

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