The 1446 book ends its explanations with a list: ninety-four everyday words, written out in the new letters. Persimmon, ice, tiger, star. It shows usage, not rules: the new letters could spell the words of daily life.
You have now met every word of gog, and every way of joining them into a sentence. What is left is practice on real questions. This part is gog’s version of the 1446 list. It is organized by your columns and your question, because you know those before you know a chart’s name. You will not find a chapter called “Histograms”. You will find a recipe called How is a measurement distributed?, and the sentence that answers it. (If you already know the chart’s name, the chart names appendix translates it into a sentence.)
The recipes use the book’s shared tables, which you can download from The book’s data. Each recipe chapter shows the first rows of every shared table before drawing from it. The recipes use only atoms taught in Parts I to III, and most link back to the chapters that own their atoms.
Almost every recipe has the same shape: the question, the sentence that answers it, the plot, and a line or two on why it works. Many then show what is one atom away: the same sentence with one small change, such as an atom swapped or one of its arguments changed. That is the real lesson. A cookbook of finished charts teaches you charts. This one teaches you that the recipes are connected: swap one atom in a recipe and you have another.
Most chapters are named for your columns: one variable, two, three or more, values over time, many groups. If you know your goal but not the chapter that answers it, start from the table below. Each row links to the recipes and chapters that answer it, in this part or an earlier one:
| How many rows fall in each category |
How many of each?, What if the table already holds the count? |
| Which category has the largest value, and by how much |
Which group is biggest?, Comparing categories |
| An average for each group |
What is the typical value per group? |
| An average with its error bar or confidence interval |
A bar with its error bar, A confidence interval, with a center |
| How the values of one measurement are distributed |
How is a measurement distributed?, What is its smooth shape? |
| How the distribution differs between groups |
How do the groups’ distributions compare?, What does every value per group look like?, What if each group needs its own panel?, Box |
| Whether two measurements are related |
Are two measurements related?, What is the trend through the points? |
| Which group each point belongs to, or a third measurement |
A third variable, and more |
| Four or more measurements of each row, all equally important |
What if four or more measurements matter equally? |
| How something changed over time |
How did it change?, How did several things change?, How did many things change? |
| How each category changed between two years |
How did each country change?, What if the change matters most? |
| How the order of the categories changed over time |
How did the order change over the years? |
| How far each value is above or below a reference |
Above and below a reference, A line at a threshold |
| How two groups compare, one on each side of zero |
What if zero separates two groups?, Where does a population pyramid come from? |
| How a whole divides into parts |
Parts of a whole, What share of the whole is each?, Nest, The pie: where you put the category |
| Values that go around a circle, such as a direction or an hour |
Polar |
| How an amount moves between stages or places |
Flow |
| Which things are connected |
Network |
| Where things are |
Map, Globe |
| A value for each region on a map |
Filling the regions: the choropleth |
| Which categories are alike |
Which categories are alike? |