Trivariate data

From WikiViz

In trivariate data, tree dependent variables varying against an independent one.

Trivariate linear data is easily representable in a three dimensional space, as we are living in a three-dimensional world. However, the problem still arises because we basically can represent in a printed image or on a computer screen a two dimensional representation of a three-dimensional space, hence some approximations are necessary (Spence, 2001).

The figure illustrates an example of a 3 dimensional scatterplot were each dimension is linearly mapped on an axis. The impassable barrier of the 2D image makes impossible to distinguish between the number of bedrooms of C and B.

To overcome this problem some solutions have been proposed, such as to project items on the plans to identify the exact position:

or to replace one dimension with a different shape of the items according to this value: