Leland Wilkinson.
The Grammar of Graphics: 2nd edn.
Springer. 2005
This book was written for statisticians, computer scientists, geographers, researchers,
and others interested in visualizing data.
It presents a unique foundation for producing almost every quantitative graphic
found in scientific journals, newspapers, statistical packages, and data visualization systems.
While the tangible results of this work have been several visualization software libraries,
this book focuses on the deep structures involved in producing quantitative graphics from data.
What are the rules that underlie the production of pie charts, bar charts, scatterplots,
function plots, maps, mosaics, and radar charts?
Those less interested in the theoretical and mathematical foundations can still get
a sense of the richness and structure of the system by examining
the numerous and often unique color graphics it can produce.
The second edition is almost twice the size of the original,
with six new chapters and substantial revision.