1975-present: High-D data visualization

Weekly chartbook (eventually computer-generated) to brief U.S. President, Vice President on economic and social matters

"Four-Fold Circular Display'' to represent 2 x 2 table

Enhancement of scatterplot with plots of three moving statistics (midmean and lower and upper semimidmean)

Experiment showing random permutations of features used in Chernoff's faces affect error rate of classification by about 25 percent

Experimental tests of statistical graphics vs tables, findings favoring latter

Scatterplot matrix, the idea of plotting all pairwise scatterplots for n variables in a tabular display

Monthly chartbook (eventually computer-generated) to brief U.S. President, Vice President on economic and social matters (StatUS)

"Cartesian rectangle'' to represent 2 x 2 table, experimentally tested against other forms

Ad Hoc Committee on Statistical Graphics, leading to the ASA Section on Statistical Graphics, later to the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics

Original invention of linked brushing (highlighting of observations selected in one display in another display of the same data), although in a manner different from how we see it in today's systems

S, a language and environment for statistical computation and graphics. S (later sold as a commercial package, S-Plus; more recently, a public-domain implementation, R is widely available), would become a lingua franca for statistical computation and graphics

Geographic correlation diagram, showing the bivariate relation between two spatially referenced variables using vectors to represent geographic covariation

An initial, modern suggestion of a method for viewing a large database by the use of selective focus around a central region, using distortion to provide a context.

Mosaic display to represent frequencies in a multiway contingency table

Fisheye view: an idea to provide focus and greater detail in areas of interest of a large amount of information, while retaining the surrounding context in much less detail

The "draftsman display'' for three-variables (leading soon to the "scatterplot matrix'') and initial ideas for conditional plots and sectioning (leading later to "coplots'' and "trellis displays'')

Another early version of brushing, invented independently of Newton, together with a system for 3-D rotations of data

Visibiltiy Base Map, a map of the United States where areas are adjusted to provide a readily readable platform for area symbols for smaller states, such as Delaware and Rhode Island, with compensating reductions in the size of larger states

The USA Today color weather map begins an era of color information graphics in newspapers. Shortly, colorful visual graphics become widespread.

Esthetics and information integrity for graphics defined and illustrated (some concepts: "data-ink ratio'', "lie factor'')

Sieve diagram, for representing frequencies in a two-way contingency table

Grand tour, for viewing high-dimensional data sets via a structured progression of 2D projections

Parallel coordinates plots for high-dimensional data

Interactive statistical graphics, systematized: allowing brushing, linking, other forms of interaction

First inclusion of grand tours in an interactive system that also has linked brushing, linked identification, visual inference from graphics, interactive scaling of plots, etc.

Interactive graphics for multiple time series with direct manipulation (zoom, rescale, overlaying, etc.)

Statistical graphics interactively linked to map displays

Use of "nested dimensions'' (related to trellis and mosaic displays) for the visualization of multidimensional data. Continuous variables are binned, and variables are allocated to the horizontal and vertical dimensions in a nested fashion

Lisp-Stat, an object-oriented environment for statistical computing and dynamic graphics

Grand tours combined with multivariate analysis

Textured dot strips to display empirical distributions

Lexis pencil: display of multivariate data in the context of life-history

Statistical theory and methods for parallel coordinates plots

Mosaic display developed as a visual analysis tool for log-linear models (beginning general methods for visualizing categorical data)

Treemaps, for space-constrained visualization of hierarchies, using nested rectangles (size proportional to some numerical measure of the node)

A spate of development and public distribution of highly interactive systems for data analysis and visualization, e.g., XGobi, ViSta

Beginnings of the general extension of graphical methods to categorical (frequency) data

Table lens: Focus and context technique for viewing large tables; user can expand rows or columns to see the details, while keeping surrounding context

Cartographic Data Visualiser: a map visualization toolkit with graphical tools for viewing data, including a wide range of mapping options for exploratory spatial data analysis

Grammar of Graphics: A comprehensive systematization of grammatical rules for data and graphs and graph algebras within an object-oriented, computational framework

Tag clouds (also known as "word clouds") are visually stimulating summaries of large bodies of text.  Their purpose is to take a selection of text and visually display the frequency of the most commonly used words within that document.  These are useful for qualitative analyses by highlighting major themes found in particular works of interest.

Sparklines: "data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics,'' designed to show graphic information inline with text and tables

The moving buble chart.

An influential, open source implementation of the Grammar of Graphics from Wilkinson (1999) in R, together with other computational tools to make it easier to produce beautiful statistical diagrams

A circular diagram desgined to facilitate the analysis of relationship among categorical and other variables using chords of a circle with various visual attributes. The main application is to genomic structure, where the chords can encode various properties of genomic sequences.