Choosing Color Palettes for Statistical Graphics
Achim Zeileis, Kurt Hornik · ePubWU Institutional Repository (Vienna University of Economics and Business) · 2006
Statistical graphics are often augmented by the use of color coding information contained in some variable. When this involves the shading of areas (and not only points or lines) - e.g., as in bar plots, pie charts, mosaic displays or heatmaps - it is important that the colors are perceptually based and do not introduce optical illusions or systematic bias. Here, we discuss how the perceptually-based Hue-Chroma-Luminance (HCL) color space can be used for deriving suitable color palettes for coding categorical data (qualitative palettes) and numerical variables (sequential and diverging palettes).