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How to create a Rose Chart in Charticulator

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a Rose chart in Charticulator

What is a Rose Chart/ Radial Polar Chart?

A rose chart, also known as Radial Polar Chart, is combination of a Radar Chart and a Column Chart. Imagine a Column chart, plotted in a radial axis, and that is a Rose Chart.

Radial charts uses a polar coordinate system instead of the cartesian one (X-Axis and Y-Axis) to plot the data.

Why is it called Rose Chart?

The Radial Polar Chart, was first used by Florence Nightingale—a British nurse and social reformer, who in 1858 developed this chart type to represent the causes of death of British soldiers during the Crimean War graphically.

What is it used for?

Rose charts or Polar charts so commonly used to to show comparisons among categories by using a circular shape.

Common Pitfalls

Polar charts tend to exaggerate the areas at the outer- ends and therefore they should be used carefully.

It is difficult to compare the length of the different spokes, because radial distances are hard to judge visually.

How do I create my own?

And finally, let me show you how to create your own rose chart!

Here is the FULL Tutorial, but if you only need bits and pieces, then scroll down:

🎫 Video | 📁Files

1. Get data into Charticulator

Lets get the data into Charticulator. Remember all the 📁Files are available for download so you can follow along.

2. Create the basic shape of the chart

Let’s begin to create the chart.

The first thing you need to do in Charticulator is to define the basic form of the chart.

As this chart is a combination of a column chart and a radial chart, in this case the base shape is a rectangle.

3. Add the length of the rectangle (Y-Axis)

Now it is time to specify the height of the rectangle which will define the Y-Axis for the chart.

4. Turn the chart into a Radial Axis

Now that we have our column chart created, it is time to turn the X-Axis into a Radial Axis.

One we have it as a radial Axis, we will format it to look like a rose chart.

5. Add the labels to the Radial Axis

You have several options to add labels to the radial axis. I don’t particularly like to add the label to the Axis itself, as it gets harder to read, I prefer to add the label as a text next to the rectangular shape.

So in this part of the video, we will:
1. Add a labels for the Radial Axis (region and number of fires)
2. Bind the text to the number of fires
3. Format the number and color of the label

Here is how:

6. Conditional format the chart

In order to conditional format elements in charticulator, you need to have a field in your data that specifies how it should be colored. For now it is the only way to do it.

7. Final formatting

And finally we just color the different elements as we see fit, to make our visual speak for itself!

8. Export your visual to any format

Now that all the hard work has been completed, it is time to export the visual to any format you like.

You can export it as:
1. Image
2. HTML visual
3. Power BI Template
4. Power BI visual

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