Driving distance tables

July 9, 2003  |  Mike Combs
6 Comment(s)

I’ve been asked to show stats for pairs of items, where every item is paired with every other item. The typical way to do this is with a table that has the list in a set of rows and columns, and the statistic at the intersection, like driving distance tables:

boston new york washington
boston na 200 400
new york 200 na 230
washington 400 230 na

I’ve found a couple of interesting graphical representations that might be useful if annotated. The first is a link diagram and the other is a, well, I don’t know what to call it, but it’s interesting. Line thickness, color and annotation could be used to convey some metrics.

Does anyone know of examples of similar charts? I’m curious about ways that might make it easier to visualize the distance, show multiple statistics per pair, or otherwise highlight information between pairs of items that are interconnected.