.. Copyright (C)  Google, Runestone Interactive LLC
   This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
   International License. To view a copy of this license, visit
   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

Introduction
============

You have already learned about histograms and bar charts, which are data
visualizations that are useful for understanding data. However, sometimes these
visualizations are not the most intuitive for looking at individual pieces of a
larger data set. This is where scatter plots come in. Scatter plots are a type
of data visualization that show the relationship between two quantitative
variables. An example of a scatter plot is shown below. As you can see in the
screenshot, each data point is plotted individually onto a graph. By organizing
data this way, it becomes easier to understand trends in larger data sets.

.. image:: figures/example_scatterplot.png
   :align: center
   :alt: An example of a scatter plot

In this section, you will learn how to create, read, and analyze scatter plots.
You will first begin by working through an example to see why scatter plots are
useful.