Heat Maps

This tech tip shows how to run a heat map. In IBM SPSS Statistics, you can work inside a single, integrated interface to run descriptive statistics, regression, advanced statistics, and machine learning models. This powerful platform equips you with comprehensive statistical tools, allowing you to create publication-ready charts, tables, and decision trees in one tool. With its integration with open source and help at your fingertips, IBM SPSS Statistics ensures you are well-equipped for any data analysis task.  

A heat map is a visualisation that shows values in a matrix using colour. Heat maps allow users to examine variables together. Users can include two categorical variables and one scale or numeric variable. For example, we want to examine average hours per day watching TV, labour force status and marital status.

To obtain a heat map, go to the Graphs menu and select Graphboard Template Chooser. This opens the Graphboard Template Chooser dialog box. The list of variables is located to the left of the dialog box. Users can select variables, and a selection of graphs becomes available. This means that the Graphboard Template Chooser selects the appropriate visualisations for the variables chosen. Once marital status, labour force status and average TV hours per day are selected, the Heat Map option is available. Users can click on the Heat Map icon to run this graph.

Users can customize graphs to suit their needs. Navigate to the Options tab and select Stylesheet. In the Stylesheet dialog box, choose the style that best fits your requirements and click OK to apply it to your graph. You can also include panels for a more detailed view. Simply go to the Detailed tab and select the panel variable from the Panel drop down menu. This will split the Heat Map into panels, providing additional insight.