Skip to main content

How to create a Heatmap?

What is Heatmap?​

Heatmap is an interactive visualization that displays your data points on a real map and signifies areas of low and high density.

In Holistics, you can use Heatmap to:

  • Visualize the density of an object (i.e. how many stores, events...) in certain areas
  • Visualize the magnitude of value of an object (i.e. how high is the temperature, revenue, population...) in certain areas

Types of Fields​

  • Latitude and Longitude: represent the geographical coordinates of each location.
  • Value: The value field represents a numerical or quantitative attribute associated with each data point.
  • Conditions: The condition field allows for the application of filters to selectively view data points based on specific criteria or requirements.

Creating a Heatmap​

📝 Goal: Following these steps to visualize the population density of the United States and to answer the question: "How is the US population distributed geographically?"

Sample Data​

Step 1: Select the Heat Map icon from the visualization pane​

Step 2: Define the Location​

In the Viz settings, drag or type your latitude and longitude values into the Latitude and Longitude fields, respectively.

If you click on Get Results, Holistics will display a heatmap that represents the density of cities in the US, which is informational but might not directly answer our question.

DEMO GIF HERE

Step 3: Visualize the Population Density​

You can also visualize the population density, drag Population to the Value field, then click Get Results.

To customize the color of the population density:

Step 4: Customize the Heat Map​

To make the Heatmap more visually appealing, you can customize the Heatmap with three options:

  • Map background: Choose how the base layer of the map is displayed. Holistics has five options: Light, Dark, Street, Satellite, and Outdoor.
  • Opacity: Adjust the strength of the color display.
  • Intensity: Control the size of the colored areas displayed.

For example, we want to find out "Why is the US population distributed mostly in the mid-east of part of the country?"

We will change the map background to Satellite, and reduce the opacity (so the color does not hide the geographical characteristics of the map).

Final Result​

We can immediately see that the mid-eastern part of the US is characterized by mountains and plateaus, making it less inhabitable.

Let us know what you think about this document :)