I am a D3/Plot novice but familiar with Plotly and other visualization tools. I would like to experiment with arbitrary scales, for example, using the populations of cities as a scale, with the x-axis ticks labeled with (probably rotated) city names.
I realize this runs a bit against the usual purpose of a rule or scale but the idea is to concisely contextualize related data, for example, contextualizing state covid stats against a ‘ruler’ of city or county populations in that state. Or more generally, contextualizing data vulnerable to distorting or minimizing intuitions or rhetoric against a more helpful framework.
Looking through Scales / Observable Plot / Observable / Observable, Plot scales seem to be driven by sets of built-in or automatic domains/intervals (dates, alphabets, logs).
My questions are:
- Is this a D3 task or is an arbitrary scale (with legible labeling) in Plot a possibility?
- Has anyone come across similar experiments in Observable or elsewhere?