For a hierarchical view with expand/collapse capability, Icicle charts can be helpful:
Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
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Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#12Treemap is the densest/most accurate information source on a per px basis. Flamegraphs are pretty good but with a fixed Y and variable X your box area is inaccurate, and it wastes a fair amount of plot space with the non-flame area. The sunburst chart is really pretty but bad from an information communication perspective.
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#13I was analyzing my spending in 2025, one of these graphs could be interesting.
One could drill down e.g. Groceries > Drinks > Coca-Cola if one is so inclined...
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#14All of these suck. Use nested bar graphs like TreeSize and it’s instantly obvious what your biggest hitter is for any particular nesting level. In lieu of that, a flame graph is tolerable. The polar coordinate one is very pretty garbage. EDIT: Use it when you want to mislead people with a flashy graph.
Why do treemaps suck?
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#15The treemap screenshot doesn't look correct. Nearly all charting libs (like Apache Echarts) will group nodes with a heading name, so not sure why they claim it would be hard to notice the "drivers" node. I guess in that screenshot, sure, but that looks like just a bad implementation of a treemap. Maybe this was the case back in 2017?
Flame graphs I have a love/hate relationship with. The hierarchy is very useful, but the name and coloring can be very confusing and misleading. Most people I show them to think red == something bad, but the color is actually just for aesthetics.
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#16Personally, I find treemaps unmatched for disk space analysis. Specifically, I like to use the squarify layout algorithm, to NOT use the "cushion gradient" shading method, to use inset frames to convey depth visually, and to include filenames. This maximizes glanceable information density, for the use case of identifying large objects to delete to recover space.
This is how the old spacemonger app worked, and I liked it so much I had to recreate it for Linux/Mac: https://github.com/alanbernstein/treemonger. My version still needs some work, but it's minimally useable.
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#17Brendan Gregg needs to release a GPU oriented system performance book.
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#18It's not that hard to fix the area problem with sunburst charts, by decreasing the radius for outer rings.
E.g.
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#19[deleted]
Re: Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
#20Personally, I find treemaps unmatched for disk space analysis. Specifically, I like to use the squarify layout algorithm, to NOT use the "cushion gradient" shading method, to use inset frames to convey depth visually, and to include filenames. This maximizes glanceable information density, for the use case of identifying large objects to delete to recover space. This is how the old spacemonger app worked, and I liked…
Treemaps are also good for profiling (see KCachegrind), they waste a lot less space than flamegraphs and the area-relationship is relatively well maintained.