Choose your visualization

Easily switch between different types of visualisations with the click of a button. Data can be viewed as maps, bar charts, line graphs and scatter plots and bubble charts. StatPlanet and StatTrends also enable data to be viewed as a vertical bubble chart (a point chart where the size of the points can be scaled according to a second indicator). Add-on modules are available for visualizing data for multiple indicators over time, through a time series graph or stacked area chart.

Select map areas (such as countries or districts) by clicking on them in the map or through the Selection Panel. Display key information in a popup when moving the mouse over a map area. Define groups of map areas on the fly, or select one from a pre-defined region list. Maps and graphs update to display data only for the selected group or region.

Animate changes over time

Maps, bar charts, vertical bubble charts and scatter plots can be animated over time. Watch the gradual color transitions of map areas, the changing dimensions of bars, and the scale and position of bubbles over time.

Zoom into map regions

Select and zoom into custom-definable map regions, for example to Europe or Africa in the world map, or to regions and districts within country maps. The maps and graphs will update to display only map areas and corresponding data for the selected region. See also: map filters.

Hide or reveal details

Easily change the level of detail with a click of a button, for example to display or hide map and graph labels and data values, or to open or close interface components.

Customize

Customize the colors and value ranges of maps and graphs. Sort, filter or remove map areas from the display.

Export

Export maps, graphs or data for use in other applications or for your publications.

Automatically import data

Automatically import data using the Excel-based data editor to create new maps and visualizations within minutes.

Use the included maps, load ESRI shapefile maps, or custom design your maps.

Create different map types

StatPlanet can used to create quantitative, categorical (qualitative) and proportional symbol maps.

Customize the appearance

Completely customize the appearance by selecting the interface components you wish to include, the map details to be displayed, as well as the colors of the interface, maps and graphs.

Customize the experience

There are hundreds of settings and options to completely customize the experience for users. Add descriptions and images through map mouse-over popups, integrate web-pages using the story panel to tell stories around specific indicators and dates, define custom map regions and map legends, and more.

A proportional symbol map scales symbols (usually circles) according to the indicator being mapped. Each symbol can represent a country or other map area. In StatPlanet the symbol map is overlaid on top of the choropleth map (see above). This means that two data sets can be shown on the same map – one for the choropleth map and one for the symbol map.

To show the symbol map, click the symbol icon (shown on the left) in the bottom-left corner of the screen. If you have bookmarked an indicator, the symbol map represents the data for the bookmarked indicator, whereas the choropleth map represents the data for the selected indicator. (If the bookmarked indicator is currently selected, both the symbol map and the choropleth map represent the bookmarked indicator). 

Select country or other map area using the map

• Mouse over country or map area: Moving the mouse over a country or other map area brings up a popup containing information about that particular country or map area for the selected indicator (as well as the bookmarked indicator, if there is one).
• Click on country or map area: You can select a country or other map area by clicking on it in the map. This will highlight it in the graph. See also the Selection Panel for additional selection options.

• Change map colors: Clicking on any of the colors in the legend will bring up a color selection panel. In this panel you can change both the colors (either Sequential or Diverging color schemes), as well as the number of color classes (between 3 and 9). The color schemes are from the Color Brewer website, which is an excellent resource for more information on selecting map colors.

• Change map legend ranges: To adjust the data range of the map legend, click on any of the values. Use the popup to increment or decrement the value, or enter a new value.

You can find the save map button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. To change the image type, size or quality, use the Options Panel. This feature is only available in the web version.

The map navigation controls are normally hidden from view. Move the mouse towards the bottom-right of the screen to make them appear.

• Zoom: You can zoom in and out of the map using the 'zoom in' and 'zoom out' buttons, or by dragging the zoom slider up or down. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can also use this to zoom in and out.
• Moving the map: click and drag the map with the mouse to move it to a new position.
• Restore map position: the button shown on the left restores the map to the original coordinates for the selected region.

Use the "sort" button to sort the graph from lowest to highest, highest to lowest, highest to lowest starting in the middle, or alphabetically.

The time series button is located in the top left corner of the Graph Panel. Use the Selection Panel to add countries, map areas or other variables (depending on your data set) to the time series graph. Click on it again if you wish to to remove it. Countries or other map areas can also be selected directly from the map (See also Selection Panel)

Use the "sort" button to sort the time series labels.

The scatter plot button is located in the top left corner of the Graph Panel. Clicking on the button will automatically use the selected indicator as the x-axis variable. You need to select a second indicator as the y-axis variable.

Indicators can be selected either from the Indicators Panel, or in the Graph Panel (see below).

Use the drop-down menu in the top of the Graph Panel to change the scale of the 'bubbles' according to a selected indicator.

Use the 'options' icon in the Graph Panel to show or hide the trendline. Move the mouse over the trendline to see the slope and trendline equation. (See also the Wikipedia article Linear regression)

Note: the x-axis and y-axis indicators are also shown in seperate panels to the left of the Graph Panel. The y-axis indicator is shown in Indicators panel, and the x-axis indicator in the Bookmarked panel right below.

An add-on module is available for StatPlanet to display Pearson correlation coefficients in the scatter plot. 

Select x-axis / y-axis indicator
Click on the x-axis or y-axis label, then select an indicator from the drop-down menu.

To change the graph size, move the mouse to the sides or corners of the Graph Panel until you see the cursor change to look like the one shown on the left. Click and hold down the left mouse button, then drag the panel to the size you want. Release the mouse button once you have the right size.

StatPlanet and StatTrends include a Search panel, selectable through the search icon in the Graphs panel. You can filter by indicator and category by typing into the search box. The list is updated dynamically as you type.

* The bookmark indicator icon can be added through the StatPlanet Data Editor sheet ‘settings’, variable ‘V-IND-O’.

If the Selection Panel is hidden, click the 'select' button in the bottom-left corner of the screen to make it appear. 

Select region
Use the drop-down menu in the Selection Panel to select and zoom into particular map regions or areas. The map region name, associated map areas, and map coordinates can be defined in the StatPlanet Data Editor. For example, 'Central Asia' and 'Europe' are pre-defined regions included in the World Map edition.  Users can also select map areas and dynamically create their own custom regions (see below).

Deselect All button
Press the Deselect All button to clear your selection.

Save / Export table
You can save the table as a .CSV file which can be opened by most spreadsheets (such as Excel). You can find the export button in the bottom-left corner, if export has been enabled (non-free, licensed versions only). Alternatively, to copy and paste data into Excel, you can also right-click anywhere in StatPlanet or StatTrends, and select 'Copy data'.

Map:

• Map colors: map background, map borders, map text color, map text outline color, etc.);
• Map text size;
• Map symbol size (proportional symbol map symbols);
• Map legend - estimate best value distribution: adjust the values so that there is a more equal distribution of countries for each color class. This will usually result in a map with a better distribution of colors. If this is switched off, the value range for each color class will be set at equal intervals based on the highest and lowest value in the data range.
• Map legend - show maximum & minimum values
• Map legend colors.

Graph:

• Graph colors: background, bar & scatter points, scatter point borders;
• Graph text size;
• Transparency level of graph area (bars / bubbles);
• Size of bubbles (scatter plot graph).

General options:

• Animation duration;
• Decimal places shown;
• Adjust map/graph scale:
  StatPlanet automatically adjusts the map and graph scale to suit the data set. However, in some cases you may wish to keep it fixed, for example if you have manually set the scale. You can set (or prevent) the automatic updating of the map/graph scale on (i) changing indicator, (ii) changing region, (iii) changing year. The default setting is for StatPlanet to adjust the scale when changing indicator or region, but not year. 

Save/export map: (web version only)

• Image type: PNG or JPEG;
• Image size (% of original);
• Image quality (%): for JPEG images only.

• Show or hide country or map area names on the map or graph (country names can be shown in full, in abbreviated form or as ISO3 codes);
• Show or hide country or map area statistics on the map;
• Show or hide the map popup and its components - bar chart, indicator and statistic;
• Show or hide various panels.