PLSS: Public Land Survey System

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~alfrankl/landrecords.htm

The PLSS system is a method of subdividing land areas within the U.S. It was meant to be used as a way for the federal government to divide public domain lands. It uses a grid-like system and a series of "coordinates" to deliniate one plot from the next. This method provides a systematic way to locate land anywhere in the U.S. It is much more accurate than the metes-and-bounds system because it does not use natural features in the survey process which can change with time. We can clearly see that the land in Alabama has been subdidved by using the PLSS system. This map is showing how the PLSS system is arranged across the entirety of Alabama.

Index Value Plot

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2008/01/beating-heart-of-stock-market.html

Index value plots shows the relationship of each residual against the corresponding index in the data set. This would be the comparison of values of the x and y axis. The above image is an example of the stock market growth rates within a period of time. The row number or index, the x-axis,  corresponds to the order in which the data was collected and in this case it was annually. The chart above visualizes the growth rates of the S&P index from 1872 to 2007. You can see the times when the stock markets growth has increased and decreased during a specific time period.

Triangular Plot

http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/graphcode.php?graph=76

Triangular plot are used to show the interaction between three variables. In an equilateral triangle, the ratios of the three variables are shown as positions in the triangle. It is widely used in geological studies but it can be used to analyze any three variable system. Here, the proportions of the three variables must always sum to zero for the plot to be valid. In this triangular plot soil textures are defined by proportions of sand, silt, and clay. This would be used to determine the type of soil based on the three properties.

Lorenz Curve

http://www.maxi-pedia.com/lorenz+curve

Lorenz curves are graphical representations of the cummulative distribution function of the probability distribution of something, in this case wealth. In short it is the proportionality of a distribution between two variables. It uses statistical values to determine its data points on the graph. This is widely used in economic studies. This graph shows the relationship between the percentage of a population and the percentage of income it acquires. Here, 50% of the population is bringing in about 10% of the national total income on average. The perfect equality line represents what would happen if 50% of the population earned 50% of the national total income on average, which is false.

Windrose

http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/climate/windrose.html

A windrose is a graphical technique used to view how wind speed and direction are distributed at a certain location. The longer spokes show winds with a greater frequency while shorter spokes represent winds with a smaller frequency. The length of the spoke correlates to the amount of time the wind blew from that direction during the time ellapsed. The colors depict the wind speed. This windrose represents 30 years of combined hourly data for April winds in Fresno, California. This shows that 50% of the winds in April come from the northwest. It also shows which speeds occur more often by comparing the position of the colored segment to the rings on the windrose.

Climograph

http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/glossary/A_D/climograph.html

A climograph is a graphical representation of the monthly rainfall and temperature for a given geographic location. The data is usually averaged and then plotted. This graph can give insights to future weather predictions as well as insights to a locations climate. Precipitation is shown by the bar graph and temperature is shown by the line graph. This climograph represents monthly rainfall and temperature averages for Memphis, Tennessee. Rainfall is measured in millimeters and temperature with Celsius. For example in January, there was approximately 150mm of rainfall with an average temperature of 5 degrees Celsius.

Scatterplot

http://www.stat.sc.edu/webstat/version2.0/graphics/Scatterplot.html

Scatterplots are types of graphs that displays two variables for a set of data. The two variables make up the data points that create cartesian coordinates for the set of data. It is a summary of bivariate data that gives a good visual representation between the two variables. By producing a scatterplot, data can be visually examined to determine if their is a strong or week association between the variables. The above scatterplot is examining the number of sepals and petals in a variety of different species. You can see that the greater number of sepals means the species usually have less petals and vice versa.