Shape / inspect · All operations

Draw a small chart in each row

A variant of Chart the data

Add a column that holds a sparkline, bar or radar plot drawn from each row's values.

Status

In arcform

Not built yet

arcform does not do this yet; it would live in Brightfield's view. Its place on the roadmap

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

KNIME Analytics Platform (2)
  • Radar Plot Appenderread 2026-09-27

    Append a column holding a radar plot of selected numeric values for each row

  • Spark Line Appenderread 2026-09-27

    Append a column holding a spark line of selected numeric values for each row

VisiData (2)
  • addcol-histogramread 2026-09-23

    Add column drawing a histogram bar for current column's value in each row

  • addcol-sparklineread 2026-09-23

    Add column drawing a sparkline across the numeric columns of each row

Background

A sparkline is a very small line chart, typically drawn without axes or coordinates.[1] In KNIME, the Spark Line Appender node appends a new column which holds spark lines for the selected numerical columns.[2] In Google Sheets, the SPARKLINE function creates a miniature chart contained within a single cell.[3]

When to use it

A sparkline presents the general shape of a variation, typically over time, in some measurement in a simple and highly condensed way.[1] Reach for a chart in each row when the rows are what you compare, one trend per product or one profile per customer, rather than one chart of the whole table. (Meridian's view)

In KNIME's Spark Line Appender, the spark lines visualise the values from the selected columns in the order they appear in the table.[2] Put the columns in time order before drawing, or the line will tell a story the data does not. (Meridian's view) KNIME's Spark Line Appender needs domain information, the minimum and maximum values, to be present for every selected column.[2]

KNIME's Radar Plot Appender adds a column holding a radar plot for each row, summarising selected values on that row.[4] KNIME's Radar Plot Appender also displays a selected range on each plot, which eases spotting values outside that range.[4] Radar charts are also known as spider charts, star plots and Kiviat diagrams, among other names.[5] Star plots are helpful for small-to-moderate-sized multivariate data sets, and their effectiveness is limited to data sets with less than a few hundred points.[6] A radar plot in every row suits a short table you read row by row; for thousands of rows, sort or filter first. (Meridian's view)

The method

Edward Tufte documented a compact style in 1983 called intense continuous time-series.[1] Edward Tufte introduced the term sparkline in 2006 for small, high resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images.[1] The first software sparkline was programmed in 1999 by Peter Zelchenko, who introduced an inline-chart feature for Mike Medved's QuoteTracker.[1] In Google Sheets, the function is written SPARKLINE(data, [options]).[3]

A radar chart displays multivariate data as a two-dimensional chart of three or more quantitative variables represented on axes starting from the same point.[5] A star plot consists of equi-angular spokes, each representing one variable, and the length of a spoke is proportional to the variable's magnitude relative to its maximum magnitude across all data points.[6] Star plots are typically generated in a multi-plot format, with many stars on each page and each star representing one observation.[6]

Compared with the alternatives

Whereas a typical chart is designed to show as much data as possible and is set off from the flow of text, sparklines are intended to be succinct, memorable and located where they are discussed.[1] A column of small charts keeps each picture next to its row's other values, so it can be sorted and filtered with them; a separate chart cannot. (Meridian's view)

Sources

  1. [1]Sparkline - Wikipediasecondary source
  2. [2]Spark Line Appenderdocumentation
  3. [3]SPARKLINE - Google Docs Editors Helpdocumentation
  4. [4]Radar Plot Appenderdocumentation
  5. [5]Radar chart - Wikipediasecondary source
  6. [6]1.3.3.29. Star Plotsecondary source