ggtime: A Grammar of Temporal Graphics

TL;DR

ggtime introduces a declarative grammar for visualizing complex temporal data, enabling flexible, semantically accurate graphics across various temporal granularities and formats, addressing limitations of existing tools.

Contribution

It proposes a novel grammar of temporal graphics and an implementation that standardizes and aligns diverse temporal semantics in visualization.

Findings

Supports visualization across multiple temporal granularities

Standardizes irregular durations in temporal data

Enables interoperability with other semantic variables

Abstract

Visualizing changes over time is fundamental to learning from the past and anticipating the future. However, temporal semantics can be complicated, and existing visualization tools often struggle to accurately represent these complexities. It is common to use bespoke plot helper functions designed to produce specific graphics, due to the absence of flexible general tools that respect temporal semantics. We address this problem by proposing a grammar of temporal graphics, and an associated software implementation, 'ggtime', that encodes temporal semantics into a declarative grammar for visualizing temporal data. The grammar introduces new composable elements that support visualization across linear, cyclical, quasi-cyclical, and other granularities; standardization of irregular durations; and alignment of time points across different granularities and time zones. It is designed for interoperability with other semantic variables, allowing navigation across the space of visualizations while preserving temporal semantics.