
chart
scatterplot
also: scatter plot, scatter chartPoints positioned by two quantitative variables.
Classification
- chart
- points and bubbles › scatterplots
- correlation; Financial Times Visual Vocabulary
Channels
position on common scale; main: two quantitative variables; Munzner 2014
area; secondary: third variable (see bubble chart); Munzner 2014
color hue; secondary: group; Munzner 2014
shape; secondary: group; Munzner 2014
Variants
Bland-Altman plotspecial case
bubble chartpoint size
connected scatterplotconnected
funnel plotspecial case
hexbin plothexagonal binning
Manhattan plotspecial case
quantile-quantile plotspecial case
residual plotspecial case
scatterplot matrixall pairs
ternary plotbarycentric coordinates
volcano plotspecial case
Attestation and synonyms
- English definition: Brinton, Graphic Presentation, 1939↗
- scatter chart; Brinton, Graphic Presentation, 1939↗
- buck-shot chart; Brinton, Graphic Presentation, 1939↗
- shot-gun chart; Brinton, Graphic Presentation, 1939↗
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
ggplot2::geom_point(); GitHub 7 025 stars; last commit 2026-10; paper (33 455 citations)
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
- A field guide to digital color
- Applied Multivariate Statistics in R
- Atlas of knowledge: anyone can map
- Ault, Nam Liao & Musolino, Principles of Data Science, OpenStax, 2025
- Beautiful evidence
- Better data visualizations: a guide for scholars, researchers, and wonks
- blog.datawrapper.de↗
- Bremer & Barone, Chart, CRC Press, 2025
- Brinton, Graphic Presentation, 1939↗
- Cartography: thematic map design
- Ciccione & Dehaene, The Neural Bases of Graphical Perception: A Novel Instance of Cultural Recycling?, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2026↗
- Ciccione et al., Can Non-Human Primates Extract the Linear Trend from a Noisy Scatterplot?, iScience, 2025↗
- Ciccione et al., The Superiority of Graphics over Text in Long-Term Memory Retention, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2025↗
- Ciccione et al., Trend Judgment as a Perceptual Building Block of Graphicacy and Mathematics, Scientific Reports, 2023↗
- Ciccione, « The Perception and Understanding of Patterns and Graphics », colloque Seeing the Mind, Educating the Brain, Collège de France, 2025↗
- Ciccione, Dehaene & Dehaene, Outlier Detection and Rejection in Scatterplots, JEP: Human Perception and Performance, 2023↗
- Ciccione, Sablé-Meyer & Dehaene, Analyzing the Misperception of Exponential Growth in Graphs, Cognition, 2022↗
- Computational statistics in data science
- Cook & Laa, Interactively Exploring High-Dimensional Data and Models in R, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2026
- Data fluency: empowering your organization with effective data communication
- Data points: visualization that means something
- Data sketches
- Data Visualisation Guide, data.europa.eu
- Data visualisation: a handbook for data driven design
- Data visualization handbook
- Data visualization literacy: Definitions, conceptual frameworks, exercises, and assessm...
- Data visualization: a practical introduction
- Data-driven storytelling
- data-to-viz.com
- dataphys.org
- datavizcatalogue.com
- datawrapper.de↗
- Design for information: an introduction to the histories, theories, and best practices ...
- Effective data storytelling: how to drive change with data, narrative, and visuals
- Effective data visualization: the right chart for the right data
- Elavsky, Chartability: POUR-CAF accessibility heuristics
- Envisioning information
- Exploratory Data Analysis: Descriptive Analysis, Visualization, and Dashboard Design (w...
- Friendly & Wainer, A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication, Harvard University Press, 2021
- From data to viz
- Fundamentals of computer graphics
- Graphic presentation
- Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Gr...
- Graphics for learning: proven guidelines for planning, designing, and evaluating visual...
- Handling and mapping geographic information
- How charts lie: getting smarter about visual information
- How maps work: representation, visualization, and design
- Info we trust: how to inspire the world with data
- Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference
- Information theory tools for visualization
- Interactive data visualization: foundations, techniques, and applications
- LibreTexts Statistics, textbook chapters on charts
- Making and Breaking the Grid, Third Edition
- Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistical graphics, and data visua...
- More Practical Charts
- Open Visualization Academy, courses and newsletter (Cairo et al.)
- Parallel sets: visual analysis of categorical data
- Progressive Data Analysis: Roadmap and Research Agenda
- python-graph-gallery.com
- Questions in Dataviz: A Design-Driven Process for Data Visualisation
- royal-statistical-society.github.io
- Seeing with fresh eyes: meaning, space, data, truth
- Semiology of graphics: diagrams, networks, maps
- Show me the numbers: designing tables and graphs to enlighten
- StatsLearn, “Graphs and displays” glossary↗
- Stop Misusing t-SNE and UMAP for Visual Analytics
- Storytelling with data: let's practice!
- The art of insight: how great visualization designers think
- The big book of dashboards: visualizing your data using real-world business scenarios
- The elements of graphing data
- The functional art: an introduction to information graphics and visualization
- The golden age of data visualization: how did we get here?
- The grammar of graphics
- The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication
- The visual display of quantitative information
- Thematic Cartography and Geovisualization
- Visual complexity: mapping patterns of information
- Visual explanations: images and quantities, evidence and narrative
- Visual strategies for biological data
- Visualization Analysis and Design
- Visualization of Time-Oriented Data
- Visualize This
- Visualizing with text
- Wickham, Çetinkaya-Rundel & Grolemund, R for Data Science, 2nd ed., 2023
- Wickham, Navarro & Pedersen, ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis, 3rd ed. online↗
- Wikipedia — Data and information visualization
- Wikipedia in English↗
- Wilke, Fundamentals of Data Visualization, O'Reilly, 2019
- xeno.graphics↗
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.