A mosaic plot is a data visualization for exploring relationships between two or more categorical variables. Its parameters are: (1) categorical variables that partition a contingency table into rectangular cells, (2) cell frequencies or proportions encoded as the area of each rectangle, (3) optional color or shading to encode residuals from independence. The mosaic is constructed by recursively subdividing a unit square so that each rectangle's area is proportional to its cell count, then partitioning each child rectangle according to conditional distributions. It persists through rendering in statistical visualization libraries (e.g., R's vcd, ggplot2 extensions). [formal: mosaicus | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
mosaic plot
A mosaic plot is a data visualization for exploring relationships between two or more categorical variables. Its parameters are: (1) categorical variables that partition a contingency table into rectangular cells, (2) cell frequencies or p…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made data visualization that represents the relationship between two or more categorical variables through rectangles whose areas are proportional to the frequencies in each category combination. Built to persist as a graphic convention in statistical graphics, data analysis, and exploratory data analysis.
Names and aliases
- mosaic ploten · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrvfy7ya011u2ceilq543hu4INSTANCE_OF →
A mosaic plot IS a specific kind of plot: it displays multivariate categorical data as a set of rectangles whose areas are proportional to cell frequencies. It is a plot (visual encoding of data on axes), and the nearest kind is plot since plot INSTANCE_OF chart already exists.
- cmsex9asl06523vv33cotsbhaINSTANCE_OF →
TESTED INSTANCE_OF: mosaic plot IS a specific kind of visual encoding — it encodes two categorical variables using position (along a baseline) and area (perpendicular to baseline). A mosaic plot is a concrete instantiation of the general visual encoding concept.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 23, 2026, 6:16 AM UTC
- Content hash
- a26092d22116cdfd9649eb287ce7e93fc8960580ffd13c97be490715bdbe2acd