Visualization VocabularyDataviz vocabulary
Diagram: scatterplot
Drawing: Adrien Taudière (CC0)
ggplot2 example: scatterplot
Adrien Taudière (CC0); R code ↓; data: palmerpenguins (Horst, Hill & Gorman 2020) (CC0)
Wikidata image: scatterplot
DanielPenfield (CC BY-SA 3.0); Wikimedia Commons; item Q1045782

Classification

Channels

Variants

Attestation and synonyms

Scientific literature

OpenAlex: 22 318 papers since 1938, 39% in the last five years; mostly in Medicine, Computer Science, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; Wikidata

Seminal references

  • first known use (1833) Herschel (1833). On the investigation of the orbits of revolving double stars. Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society; Ciuccarelli 2026

R packages

R code of the ggplot2 example

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(palmerpenguins)

centres <- penguins |>
  group_by(species) |>
  summarise(x = mean(bill_length_mm, na.rm = TRUE), y = mean(bill_depth_mm, na.rm = TRUE))

p <- ggplot(penguins, aes(x = bill_length_mm, y = bill_depth_mm, colour = species)) +
  geom_point(size = 1.6, alpha = 0.6, na.rm = TRUE) +
  geom_label(data = centres, aes(x = x, y = y, label = species), size = 3.5,
             fontface = "bold", fill = "white", border.colour = NA) +
  scale_x_continuous(labels = lex_number, breaks = lex_break_breaks, expand = lex_break_expand) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = lex_number, breaks = lex_break_breaks, expand = lex_break_expand) +
  labs(title = "Bill shape sets the three species apart",
       x = "Bill length (mm)", y = "Bill depth (mm)",
       caption = "Data: palmerpenguins (Horst, Hill & Gorman 2020)") +
  theme_lex_viz(break_not_zero = "xy") +
  theme(legend.position = "none")

Sources (89)

1299 occurrences in the corpus; indexed by 21 books

Show the 89 sources

Cite this entry

Stable addresshttps://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en-only/term/scatterplot.html

ReferenceTaudière Adrien. 2026. scatterplot. In Visualization Vocabulary, version 1.0.0. IdEst. https://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en-only/term/scatterplot.html

BibTeX
@incollection{taudiere2026-scatterplot,
  author    = {Taudière, Adrien},
  title     = {scatterplot},
  booktitle = {Visualization Vocabulary},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {1.0.0},
  publisher = {IdEst},
  url       = {https://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en-only/term/scatterplot.html},
  note      = {CC0 1.0}
}

Page created on 2026-10-13. Text last changed on 2026-11-09. Images last changed on 2026-10-22. Numbers computed on 2026-10-22.