Heat Map-concept

Hello friends....

Today while preparing the presentation on the article, my group came across an interesting topic known as ‘Heat map’ which was interestingly used in a combination with hierarchical clustering. So found this blog as the best opportunity to share this piece of information with all of you....

What is a Heat map?

It’s a graphical representation of the data where the values are taken up by a variable in a two dimension table and that data is represented by colours.

In lay man terms the data in the clustering table is replaced by colours so it becomes easy for humans to interpret the data. A heat map keeps transforming numerical data into colour symbols, which leverages the understanding and the interpretation of the data presented. Larger values are represented with darker shades like red where as smaller values are represented with lighter shades like blue and neutral values are represented by shades like grey.

For example: - Heat map can be used to identify the high price band stocks in NIFTY as well as the low priced stock. If the price of Reliance stock is high it will have a black or a red colour whereas if TCS is low priced it will have a blue or green colour.

Now I would like to share the application of Heat map with hierarchical clustering....

 The data obtained from hierarchical clustering is replaced by the colours for easy understanding and heat maps also help analyzing the trends in the data i.e. if it’s an upward moving trend or a downfall.

Uses of Heat maps:-

1) Can be used to represent stock prices, their highs and lows.

2) Can be even used to represent the various geographic areas according to the climatic temperatures.

3) Can be used to determine the performance of various departments in a company.

4) Can be used as a strong marketing tool for forecasting sales.

Why Heat maps?

To stay ahead  businesses need tools that can provide an edge in handling the increasing volume and complexity of information, in communicating information and analysis effectively, and to do all of it quickly and accurately Heat maps are very useful.

Hope this gave you all an interesting insight into the concept of Heat maps....keep checking this space for other interesting updates....

Source: - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map

The article:- Analyzing the Longitudinal K-12 Grading Histories of Entire Cohorts of Students: Grades, Data Driven Decision Making, Dropping Out and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis

www.bazaartrend.com/nsecharts/marketwatch_heatmap.php