Parallel coordinates

Parallel coordinates
Parallel coordinates
Ggobi-flea2
Parallel coordinate plot of the flea data in GGobi.

Parallel Coordinates plots are a common method of visualizing high-dimensional datasets to analyze multivariate data having multiple variables, or attributes.

To plot, or visualize, a set of points in n-dimensional space, n parallel lines are drawn over the background representing coordinate axes, typically oriented vertically with equal spacing. Points in n-dimensional space are represented as individual polylines with n vertices placed on the parallel axes corresponding to each coordinate entry of the n-dimensional point, vertices are connected with n-1 polyline segments.

This data visualization is similar to time series visualization, except that Parallel Coordinates are applied to data which do not correspond with chronological time. Therefore, different axes arrangements can be of interest, including reflecting axes horizontally, otherwise inverting the attribute range.