Grapharti is a graph designed to display a large number of heterogeneous data which usually contains some text.
Grapharti consists of a large number of rectangles aligned
in a table. The rectangles vary in width and colour. When a mouse rolls
over the tiles extra information about the data is revealed. 
A grapharti is meant to be visually appealing as well as displaying a
large amount of data.
Some examples of grapharti appear below.
The following grapharti are based on data which was collected from opinion polls carried out on the Australian ninemsn website from December 2000 until May 2006. The data are no longer available from the website, however, daily opinion polls still appear on the website.
The ninemsn data can be viewed in tables: in date order, in order of number of responses, or in order of proportion of "yes" voters. The topics dealt with in the questions, and the number of questions relationg to those topics are also tabularised.
The data can also be displayed as grapharti. The grapharti of the ninemsn data can be viewed in date order, or in order of proportion of "yes" voters.
The data was organised by various topics at different times;
once using all the data up to the end of 2004; and later using all the
data up to May 2006. Questions referring to various issues can be viewed
in grapharti;
using all data to the end of 2004, (A),
and all data up to May 2006, (B).
| Topics dealt with in questions | Grapharti in Date order | Sorted by proportion of "yes" voters |
|---|---|---|
| Politics | A; B | A; B |
| Public Issues | A; B | A; B |
| War, Terrorism and Refugees | A; B | A; B |
| Sport | A; B | A; B |
| All topics | A; B | A; B |
Grapharti can display other types of heterogeneous data. Click here to see how Grapharti has been used to display information from the Australian Stock Exchange on the 9th of November, 2006. The data has been grouped in sectors and sorted by its percentage increase over the day.
At a glance, the viewer can find stocks which have performed particularly well or particularly badly and stocks which have been traded heavily on that day. By rolling the mouse over the tiles the viewer is able to read the Opening, Closing, Highest and Lowest prices for the stock on the day. The viewer can also read the volume of shares traded for that stock. By clicking in the centre of the tile the viewer is diverted to a page which shows the current performance of the stock.
Copyright Macquarie University