Sparkline ( English sparkline , from English spark - spark, English line - line) - a term that was coined by Edward Tufty to refer to small-sized, but quite information-dense graphs.
The main feature of sparkline is their small size. Since the graphs are small, there is almost always no place to display the axes or any signatures, so it is impossible to find out the exact values from them. Instead, sparklines provide an opportunity to see the big picture. Sparklines can be very useful as an additional source of valuable information, while taking up very little space.
Sparklines can come in handy in many areas of human activity, where you need to monitor processes that generate a lot of data. It is especially worth highlighting such areas as finance and trading , sports events, scientific and medical analysis, system administration .
Although the size of sparklines can vary, Edward himself uses the adjective word-sized , that is, he says that sparklines are comparable in size to words.
It is important to understand that sparklines do not allow accurate and comprehensive data to be displayed. They only make it possible to show significant amounts of data where there is simply no place for other display means [1] .
Examples
In medicine, sparklines can complement medical history. If next to the results of the last analysis, the results of all previous ones are displayed, then the doctor will have the opportunity to evaluate not only the last analysis, but also the overall dynamics.
In sports statistics, sparklines can be used to display competition results. For example, the entire baseball season of the New York team is shown below. A dash up indicates victory, down indicates defeat. Red lines mean that the losing team was left without points, and horizontal lines show home games.
In trading, sparklines can be used to display the dynamics of changes in currencies, quotes, and more. For example, the table below shows the sparkline of the Dow Jones Index (10765.45) on February 7, 2006. As you can see from the previous sentence, sparklines are conveniently embedded directly into the text.
American Stock Market Activity February 7, 2006 Index Day Value Change Dow jones 10765.45 −32.82 (−0.30%) S&P 500 1256.92 −8.10 (−0.64%) Nasdaq 2244.83 −13.97 (−0.62%)