Decide if a treemap suits my part-to-whole data
Judges whether a treemap suits your pasted hierarchy of values, computes the shares you can check, and flags data that is too thin or too flat.
Task:
Judge whether a treemap is a good way to show the hierarchy of values below, and name a fallback if it is not.
Context:
The values measure [what is measured, with unit] and the levels are [for example department then team]. The reader should see [the biggest contributors, a comparison of parts or the full structure].
Rules:
- Check the number of levels, the number of items per level and the spread between the largest and smallest values, and say how each affects readability.
- Compute each top-level share of the total, mark these figures as computed, and say which numbers you only read from the paste. Do not invent values.
- If there are fewer than about 6 items, one dominant item above 80 percent of the total, or negative values, say the data is a poor fit and why.
- Give label and color advice for the first level only, and one fallback chart.
Result:
A verdict in one sentence, a table of top-level shares, and the advice in at most four lines.
Material:
[paste the hierarchy and values here, one item per line, with its parent]