A word cloud is a special visual representation that displays a set of textual values (or categories) using fonts of different sizes and colors. The larger the font, the more frequently that category appears. An example of such visualization can be seen in Figure 21-1. This type of visualization is often used for navigating topics in a blog or on a website: at a glance, it’s clear what topics the materials are about and which themes are the most popular.
Figure 21-1. Word cloud sample
Let’s see what we can achieve by applying a word cloud for business purposes. To do this, we will attempt to display the best-selling products using the names of product subcategories as tags and the sales volume to determine the weight of the subcategories (see Figure 21-2).
Figure 21-2. Word cloud on sales data
In Figure 21-2, we cannot precisely compare how much mountain bike sales exceed road bike sales or assess the structure of which products contribute to 80% of sales. However, we can qualitatively get an overview of the entire range of products.
Such a diagram is not commonly used in corporate reporting, but there are cases where it effectively presents information in a small screen area. But before we move on to its construction, let’s carefully consider when you ...
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