A Mosaic of Television Ratings

Abstract

A mosaic is a graphical display of cross-classified data in which each count is represented by a rectangle of area proportional to the count. The positions and sides of the rectangles are set to encourage comparisons between counts in the figures. Mosaics are useful for discovering unusually high or small counts and for discovering dependencies between variables. In principle, mosaics may be used for any number of cross-classifying variables, but six seems to be a practical maximum. A mosaic is given for a four-way classification of Nielsen ratings.

Key Words:

• Graphics
• High-dimensional data
• Contingency tables
• Cross-tabulated data
• Cross-classified data