Axis composition

The basic idea of the composition technique (Mackinlay, 1986; Card et al., 1999) is the orthogonal placement of axes that encode the same information, creating a 2D metric space of multidimensional data. An example of this technique is the diagram of the Napoleon's army route illustrated in figure.

This is an example of single-axis composition technique (Mackinlay, 1986) where attributes army size, army longitude, army latitude, and temperature have identical horizontal axis which is the time. The figure below illustrates how C. J. Minard composed these variables in the famous diagram.

Single-axis composition technique used by C. J. Minard in the Napoleon's army route in the Russian campaign diagram. Image from Mackinlay (2000).