sparkTable: Generating Graphical Tables for Websites and Documents with R

Visual analysis of data is important to understand the main characteristics, main trends and relationships in data sets and it can be used to assess the data quality. Using the R package sparkTable, statistical tables holding quantitative information can be enhanced by including spark-type graphs such as sparklines and sparkbars . These kind of graphics have initially been proposed by [Tufte, 2001] and are considered as simple, intense and illustrative graphs that are small enough to fit in a single line. Thus they can easily enrich tables and texts with additional information in a comprehensive visual way. The R-package sparkTable is using a clean S4-class design and provides methods to create dierent type of spark graphs that can be used in websites, presentations and documents. We also implemented an easy way also for non-experts to create highly complex tables. In this case, graphical parameters can be interactivly changed, variables can be sorted, graphs can be added and removed in an interactive manner to produce custom-tailored graphical tables ‐ standard tables that are enriched with graphs ‐ that can be displayed in a browser and exported to various formats.

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