Budget [3600] Candles

May 10, 2017 1:07 PM

SankeyMATIC is an easy way to create Sankey diagrams
posted by alby (11 comments total)

This is really cool, thanks!

(the gallery of diagrams is worth looking at, as well as this blog of diagrams)
posted by blahblahblah at 1:23 PM on May 10, 2017

The application of SankeyMATIC that caught my eye recently was How 52 ninth graders spell camouflage as a Sankey diagram, especially when contrasted with the original pie chart of that data.
posted by straw at 2:31 PM on May 10, 2017 [5 favorites]

I want to run this over my checking account statement, but I'm afraid of what I'll see.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:47 PM on May 10, 2017

Hey, I think this is the first time something I've made has hit the front page. :)

*waves*

The SankeyMATIC twitter feed retweets diagram examples found in the wild; it's got more variety than the Gallery page.
posted by s.e.b. at 2:57 PM on May 10, 2017 [19 favorites]

s.e.b.: "Hey, I think this is the first time something I've made has hit the front page. "

Well since you're here... is there a reason you decided not to check if the digraph passed in is acyclic? You check that in-weight and out-weight are the same, but in the case that you pass something like x -> y -> x, the diagram you get out is nonsensical in an even worse way.
posted by TypographicalError at 4:14 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also, I meant to add: great work. It's always neat to find clean tools like this online. :)
posted by TypographicalError at 4:14 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Omg thank you alby and s.e.b. both! I have been looking for a simpler way to build Sankeys for ages. I feel like this post is magically just for me.
posted by canisbonusest at 4:59 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think I'll certainly get some mileage out of this tool. Great find! And thanks for making it available, s.e.b!
posted by Harald74 at 11:53 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

I use this for planning at work. It's great. There's really nothing better than a Sankey diagram for visualising flows. It's easy to make a spreadsheet to build the data format that Sankeymatic consumes.
posted by michaelhoney at 2:40 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

TypographicalError: The short answer is, it's still in progress.

Here's a list of outstanding issues on github – detecting & warning about cycles is issue #10. :)

My development pace has been... very gradual since launch, but I still do plan to make more improvements in the coming months/years, addressing several of those issues.

More generally:

My two guiding ideas when coding it were 1) "Make it easy enough that a motivated high school student can figure it out" and 2) Tim O'Reilly's credo "Create more value than you capture".

It's been slowly-and-steadily reaching a wider audience (globally, even), and that makes me happy.
posted by s.e.b. at 6:59 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I just made three diagrams using this for a talk I'm giving next month. Very nice work, thank you for sharing it!
posted by wintermind at 7:52 AM on May 11, 2017