Spiral Strip

Abstract

A visual graphic called Spiral Strip is presented consisting of color-coded segments arranged in a spiral. The width and length of each individual segment can be different, which can be used to convey additional information (besides the color coding). Although the primary motivation for developing the new graphic was related to climatic data, it can also be used with other types of data. Several examples based on climatic, population-size, and historical data are used to show the graphic’s visual appearance and main properties. The examples also demonstrate how the meaning of the graphic can be easy to grasp and intuitively understood by a casual observer. An easy-to-use Python code package for drawing the Spiral Strips was published in a public repository.

Keywords

• visualization
• spiral geometry
• climate stripe