Sparkline

Sparkline is a type of information graphics, that presents in a simple and condensed way trends and variation, associated with a measurement such as average temperature or stock market activity. These are often used as elements of a small multiple with several lines used together.

The Sparkline is proposed by Edward Tufte for "small, high resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images" Tufte describes sparklines as "data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics".cite book
author=Edward Tufte
date=2006
title=Beautiful Evidence
publisher=Graphics Press
isbn=0961392177] . Whereas the typical chart is designed to show as much data as possible, and is set off from the flow of text (as in the box below), sparklines are intended to be succinct, memorable, and located where they are discussed.

As an example: The Dow Jones Index as a sparkline; it's also in the box below. Their use inline usually means that they are about the same height as the surrounding text.

:

References

External links

* [http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001OR&topic_id=1 Edward Tufte's explanation of sparklines]
* [http://www.bonavistasystems.com/ MicroCharts Sparkline Add-In / Free Sparkline Fonts for Excel]
* [http://www.spreadsheetml.com/sparklines.html Sparkline Fonts for Excel]
* [http://www.visifire.com/blog/2008/06/16/sparkline-charts-using-visifire/ Sparkline Charts using Open Source Silverlight Component]
* [http://bitworking.org/projects/sparklines/ Python script] for a sparklines CGI web service
* [http://search.cpan.org/~rjp/GD-Graph-sparklines/lib/GD/Graph/sparklines.pm Perl Module] to create sparklines
* [http://sparkline.org/ Sparkline PHP library] , software for making sparklines
* [http://nubyonrails.com/pages/sparklines Sparklines Graphs for Ruby] (also has a Ruby on Rails plugin).
* [http://ejohn.org/apps/jspark/ Javascript Sparklines Library] in Canvas/SVG
* [http://omnipotent.net/jquery.sparkline/ jQuery Sparklines] jQuery plugin
* [http://www.representqueens.com/spark Sparklines for Java] (Java library and JSTL taglib).
* [http://www.experiglot.com/2007/01/10/bonavista-microcharts-a-very-cool-excel-charts-add-in/ Sparklines for Excel] Excel-AddIn for Sparklines.
* [http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/SparkLines.aspx Free ASP.NET Sparklines Library]
* [http://code.google.com/apis/chart/ Google Chart API] with Sparklines
* [http://code.google.com/p/numbrcrunchr/ NumbrCrunchr] an implementation of the Google Chart API with server resource utilization metrics.