Qualitative, sequential, diverging
There are three types of color scale, each designed to highlight different things in a visualization.
| Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| qualitative | Distinguish unordered categories |
| sequential | Show ordering |
| diverging | Show above or below a midpoint |
Here you can see the results of a survey about math anxiety from a class of students. Each question has its own row, and responses range from "Strongly Disagree" to "Neutral" to "Strongly Agree".
Choose an appropriate color scale for the plot.
Data source: Bai et al. (2009)
This exercise is part of the course
Understanding Data Visualization
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