Spider Charts

Spider Charts are a way to show a one to many relationship on a map. We do this all the time in Qlik. In the table below, we have a number of very creative office names and Salesmen. Notice that Office A has 5 Salesman associated with it. Qlik Sense knows this and aranges the straight table so that the Office Name and the Salesman Name associated with it are the same row. Most of you now are thinking “why am I reading this” because we all take this association for granted all the time.

Well, If you look at the next image you’ll see that I’ve added a map. Selecting a single office also makes the same associations. Spider Charts simply show that information in a different way. However, adding a map gives you spatial context you miss in a table. For example, in this fake data set we notice that all Salesman for this company work in an office outside of the city.

Drawing the associations on a map is one thing, but what if you could qualify the association? Not all relationships are equal and therefore spider chart lines should represent the differences. In the next image we’ve formatted the lines different colors to represent the type of relationship between the office and the salesman.

Perhaps the colors represent what type of product the Salesman sells. You’ll also notice that the lines are dashed, yet another way to determine the type of relationship. In all, we can use 3 different expressions to change color, width and format to represent a spider chart relationship. Spider charts prove a very efficient way to show relationships between points on a map.

Let me know if you are using Spider Charts and, if so, how has it impacted your story on Twitter @QVGorilla.

Learn more about Spider Charts and how to use them from our QlikMaps Live video series.

This article originally appeared on the Unconventional QlikView blog.