Part of the idea behind d8taplex is that by not only discovering but actually interpreting data sets found online the user can start to learn something new from all the data being accessible in one place. Naturally, this will mean some functionality in the future allowing for the discovery of relationships between data sets. But before we get there, I've started coding up some ideas behind visualizing the correlation between variables in a single data set.
The first attempt at this employs small multiples to show sparklines of clustered variables. In the example below, we are looking at the consumption of oil by various nations (according to oilcrisis.com).
Clearly some labeling would be useful here (there are tooltips on the dev version of this), but as a proof of concept I like it. The second line includes South Korea, Singapore, Pakistan and Thailand. The oil consumption of these nations can be compared with the third line which includes Belarus, The Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Here's a couple more interesting correlations (Denmark, Sweden), (Chile, Iceland):
As these data are correlated, it may make sense to display them with a single sparkline per cluster - in some sense the icon of the cluster - then list the names of the variables.
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