Parallel sets Parallel coordinate plots provide a way to display multidimensional data in 2D plots. They do this by representing the variables as a set of parallel axes, and showing each observation as a line in parallel coordinate space, rather than as a point in standard coordinate space. Extensions of this idea for categorical data led to “parallel sets plots”, and some variations, a number of which use the Titanic data for examples. Bendix, Kosara, and Hauser (2005) Parallel sets: Visual analysis of categorical data and Kosara:2006-parallel Parallel sets: Interactive exploration and visual analysis of categorical data developed an interactive system to explore multivariate categorical data using parallel sets, in which the lines between categories of successive variables are of width proportional to the joint frequencies.

It crashed into an iceberg, and everything started to go downhill from there.

The exhibit’s centerpiece, however, was a gargantuan slab of Titanic’s hull, known as the “big piece,” that weighs 15 tons and was, after several mishaps, hoisted by crane from the seabed in 1998. Studded with rivets, ribbed with steel, this monstrosity of black metal reminded me of a T. rex at a natural history museum: impossibly huge, pinned and braced at great expense—an extinct species hauled back from a lost world.

we’ve mainly glimpsed the site as though through a keyhole, our view limited by the dreck suspended in the water and the ambit of a submersible’s lights.