Data Visualization in R and Python

17Plotly Graphics

Plotly is an open-source graphical library offering modern visualization features to Python, (https://plotly.com) for dynamic graphics. It has been subsequently ported to R, although it cannot rival ggplot yet, at least for static graphics. In Python, it has been integrated with an advanced tool for web dashboard development, called Dash, which provides the open and free community edition, employed for the examples of this book, and the commercial enterprise edition. Plotly syntax, similar to traditional Seaborn, does not follow the grammar of graphics, but is specifically developed for web visualization, it natively offers useful interactive functionalities.

In this book, we will present only a brief summary of Plotly features, they are generally simple, given all what we already have learned with Seaborn, and do not add any particular new skill, but important for us is that Plotly is the reference graphical library for Dash dashboards, which we will discuss in the next chapter and represent the real interesting topic to illustrate. Plotly will return in the last Part 4 of the book, when Python geographic maps will be discussed.

Dataset

Tourist/visitor arrivals and tourism expenditure, Open Data from the United Nations (http://data.un.org/), regarding tourist arrivals and expenditure for a set of countries and years. The dataset has been previously introduced.

17.1 Plotly Graphics

Plotly has two main graphical libraries: the most recent plotly.express ...