Hierarchy – an overview

What is it for?

Hierarchy charts represent data that is organized in a nested structure, depicting relationships of belonging or containment. They provide an excellent overview of the data structure, which can help understand complex systems and uncover hidden patterns and relationships in your data.

It includes five visualization types that you can quickly switch between: a treemap (subdivided rectangles), circles, a radial partition chart (like a multi-ring pie chart), a stacked bar chart or a radial tree.

How to get started

1

Your data should be in a long format, i.e. each row represents a single data point and each column represents a variable. For example:

Country	Income classification	Population	Region
China	Upper middle income	1 412 360 000	East Asia & Pacific
Pakistan	Lower middle income	231 402 117	South Asia
Nigeria	Lower middle income	213 401 323	Sub-Saharan Africa
Russian Federation	Upper middle income	143 449 286	Europe & Central Asia
Brazil	Upper middle income	214 326 223	Latin America & Caribbean
Egypt, Arab Rep.	Lower middle income	109 262 178	Middle East & North Africa
United States	High income	331 893 745	North America
India	Lower middle income	1 407 563 842	South Asia
Indonesia	Lower middle income	273 753 191	East Asia & Pacific
Bangladesh	Lower middle income	169 356 251	South Asia
Mexico	Upper middle income	126 705 138	Latin America & Caribbean
Japan	High income	125 681 593	East Asia & Pacific
Ethiopia	Low income	120 283 026	Sub-Saharan Africa

2

If your data isn't already in a long format, you can transform it using the Flourish unpivoting function.

3

Columns can be seen as either categorical (e.g.  Income classification and Region) or numeric (e.g. Population)

Choose:

• Categorical columns to nest your data by
• Numeric columns to size the rectangles or circles by

For example, if we wanted to know which region has the biggest population, we could nest by  Region and size by Population.

If we wanted to further break down each region into countries, we could nest by  Country and Population.

4

If you're nesting by two or more columns, you'll be able to zoom into a category by clicking. Zoom out by clicking the arrow that appears in the top right of the chart.

5

You can specify the number of visible levels in the Hierarchy settings through the Depth option. This is also where you can choose between the different types of hierarchy charts.

6

Try varying the number of visible levels within a Flourish story to gradually break down categories into sub-categories.

Hierarchy Popups

On the Hierarchy template, you have various options for when to show popups.

• Top Level only - This will only show popups when you hover over the hierarchy's top level
• Below top level - This shows popups on every level except the top level

• Above bottom level - This shows popups on every level except the bottom level
• Bottom Level only - This shows popups only on the bottom level