Relationship
Hexbin plot
Aggregates dense XY observations into hexagons coloured by count or another statistic.
- Plot
- Relationship
- Density
What it answers
Where are paired observations concentrated?
- Shape
- Coloured hexagonal bins
- What it shows
- Clusters and spatial concentration in numeric coordinates.
Example
The question
Where do most trips fall by distance and fare?
Taxi trips by distance and fare, count per hexagon (illustrative)
Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.
When to use it
Use it when
Dense scatter data with substantial overlap.
Avoid it when
Sparse data or bin resolution that hides important structure.
How to read it
Read hexagon position, then its count or statistic from the colour key.
Note
Define resolution and aggregation.
The data you need
- Layout
- Long table
- Fields
- X: number; Y: number
- One row is
- One observation with paired numeric measurements. What is the grain?
- Rules
- X and Y must refer to the same observation. Do not independently sort either column.
- Optional
- Optional ID,Group,Weight. Binning and smoothing settings belong to chart configuration.
- Preparation
- Align measurements by observation ID, select relevant variables and handle missingness. Scale or standardise only where the analytical method requires it.
- Units
- State the unit of every coordinate/variable. A unitless transformed or standardised scale must be identified; no common denominator is assumed.
Worked example
Suppose one hexagon contains 30 points and another 5. Colour by count. The first contains six times as many observations.
| X | Y |
|---|---|
| 2 | 10 |
| 4 | 100 |
| 6 | 50 |