Fundamentals of Data Visualization

Chapter 26. Don’t Go 3D

3D plots are quite popular, in particular in business presentations but also among academics. They are also almost always inappropriately used. It is rare that I see a 3D plot that couldn’t be improved by turning it into a regular 2D figure. In this chapter, I will explain why 3D plots have problems, why they generally are not needed, and in what limited circumstances 3D plots may be appropriate.

Avoid Gratuitous 3D

Many visualization tools enable you to spruce up your plots by turning the plots’ graphical elements into three-dimensional objects. Most commonly, we see pie charts turned into disks rotated in space, bar plots turned into columns, and line plots turned into bands. Notably, in none of these cases does the third dimension convey any actual data. 3D is used simply to decorate and adorn the plot. I consider this use of 3D as gratuitous. It is unequivocally bad and should be erased from the visual vocabulary of data scientists.

The problem with gratuitous 3D is that the projection of 3D objects into two dimensions for printing or display on a monitor distorts the data. The human visual system tries to correct for this distortion as it maps the 2D projection of a 3D image back into a 3D space. However, this correction can only ever be partial. As an example, let’s take a simple pie chart with two slices, one representing 25% of the data and one 75%, and rotate this pie in space (Figure 26-1). As we change the angle at which we’re looking at the ...