Is it a graph, a chart, or a diagram?

Is it a map, a choropleth map, a cartogram, or a proportional symbol map? You may have an image for each in your head, but do we all use the same naming conventions? What about a network diagram, a network chart, or a network graph? Which one do you use? Is it panning, zooming, or highlighting? What do you call some of these different interaction types?

I’m teaming up with Katy Börner and Andreas Bueckle from Indiana University and Alicia Arza from the School of Communication at Universidad de Navarra in Spain to see what the data visualization community calls these different graph and interactivity types.

I met Katy Börner last fall before her keynote address at the IEEEVIS conference in Vancouver. We talked at length about our work in graphical literacy–her interest in data visualization naming conventions and my interest in categorizing different graph types–and thought there might be a project in the future. So, we teamed up with Andreas and Alicia to help deign and launch a new survey that asks people to identify and name different graph and interaction types.

I’d like to ask you to take part in our survey. It should take you about 30 minutes to complete. You will be asked some basic demographic information and then asked to identify and name 20 different graph types. Please share the survey with any friend or colleague who you may think could be interested in participating.

To give you a bit more of an incentive to participate, we are giving out $10 Amazon gift cards! If you are one of the first 50 people to complete the payment portion at the end of the survey, you will receive a $10 Amazon gift card. If you are among the rest of our sample, you will be entered into a raffle for fifty $10 Amazon.com gift cards.