A coxcomb chart (also called a polar area diagram or Nightingale rose) is a circular data visualization that divides the plane into sectors of equal angle, each with a radius proportional to the value it represents. It is designed for comparing quantities across categories arranged by time or sequence — each sector is a category, and the area (not just the radius) encodes magnitude, making it harder to understate large values than a conventional pie chart. Florence Nightingale invented it to make mortality causes in the Crimean War visually legible to non-technical readers. It persists through statistical visualization libraries, medical and demographic reporting conventions, and the taught practice of graphical data presentation. [formal: diagramma coxcombæ | substrate: mind | horizon: hours | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
coxcomb chart
A coxcomb chart (also called a polar area diagram or Nightingale rose) is a circular data visualization that divides the plane into sectors of equal angle, each with a radius proportional to the value it represents. It is designed for comp…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made data visualization technique: a circular chart divided into sectors where each sector's radius encodes a value, derived from Florence Nightingale's military mortality diagrams to display proportional data in polar form.
Names and aliases
- coxcomb charten · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrwx744t01nlsoac41gc28qdINSTANCE_OF →
A coxcomb chart (Flandrin chart) is a specific kind of pie chart where the segment radii vary proportionally to the data values. It is always a pie chart with a particular encoding variation — segments are ordered and scaled differently, but the fundamental structure (circular divisions representing proportions) is identical.
- cmrvfy7ya011u2ceilq543hu4INSTANCE_OF →
TESTED INSTANCE_OF: a coxcomb chart (rose chart, polar area diagram) IS a specific kind of plot — a circular visual representation where sectors encode data magnitudes. It is a visual representation of data.
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Record identity
- Created
- Aug 3, 2026, 12:43 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 7fb614388a1357beac843792874d591067285e883b09cf11f4a4602402fec71b