Visualization VocabularyDataviz vocabulary
Diagram: cycle plot
Drawing: Adrien Taudière (CC0)
ggplot2 example: cycle plot
Adrien Taudière (CC0); R code ↓; data: Parent-Duchâtelet 1857, via HistData (Friendly et al. 2026) (GPL)

chart

cycle plot

Time series split by phase of the cycle to separate trend from seasonality.

graphique cyclique

Série temporelle découpée par phase du cycle pour séparer la tendance de la saisonnalité.

Chaque mois y porte sa propre sous-courbe, ce qu'une courbe unique masque.

Classification

  • chart
  • lines and areas › lines
  • change over time

Channels

Attestation

Scientific literature

OpenAlex: 67 papers since 1983, 27% in the last five years; mostly in Engineering, Medicine, Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Seminal references

R code of the ggplot2 example

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(HistData)

## One small series per month, 1812 to 1854, side by side; the horizontal
## line is that month's mean over the 43 years.
months <- Prostitutes |>
  mutate(month = factor(month.abb[mon], levels = month.abb),
         x = mon + (Year - 1812) / (1854 - 1812) * 0.8 - 0.4)
means <- months |>
  group_by(month, mon) |>
  summarise(count = mean(count), .groups = "drop")

p <- ggplot(months, aes(x = x, y = count, group = month)) +
  geom_line(linewidth = 0.35, colour = "#9b2367") +
  geom_segment(data = means, aes(x = mon - 0.4, xend = mon + 0.4, y = count, yend = count),
               colour = "#535353", linewidth = 0.6, inherit.aes = FALSE) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = 1:12, labels = month.abb, expand = expansion(add = 0.2)) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = lex_number) +
  labs(title = "Over 43 years, the number of registered prostitutes\nrose the same way in every month",
       subtitle = "Paris: one series per month, each running from 1812 to 1854; gray line: that month's mean",
       x = NULL, y = "Women registered",
       caption = "Data: Parent-Duchâtelet 1857, via the HistData R package") +
  theme_lex_viz(grid = "y", arrows = "y")

Sources (9)

29 occurrences in the corpus; indexed by 2 books

Cite this entry

Stable addresshttps://dataviz.adrientaudiere.com/en/term/cycle-plot.html

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

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

Page created on 2026-10-13. Text last changed on 2026-11-02. Images last changed on 2026-11-12. Numbers computed on 2026-10-22.