Use Heat Map Data Visualizations to Analyze Large Databases

Heatmaps are a particularly good visualization for viewing stock market data. A Heat Map is a special type of Treemap software that is particularly well suited for analyzing large flat data volumes. Heatmaps are often used in Map of the Market applications to monitor and analyze changes in stock market and portfolio data in financial services applications. Panopticon's Heat Maps handle real-time streaming data as well as historical data; you can also combine real-time data with static data in our Heat Maps.

Visualize market data in dynamic Heat Maps

Heat Maps are often used to look at financial data like stock market results. Many banks, hedge funds and mutual funds connect our Heat Map tools to streaming data feeds in order to provide a real-time view of activity on the NASDAQ, NYSE, London Stock Exchanges, or other exchanges and bourses around the world. They are an excellent way to view holdings and activity within a portfolio or to compare the performance of a portfolio against indexes like the S&P500, DJIA, FTSE, and so on.

Chandresh Iyer, Citi's Global Head of Custody and Investment Administration Services, describes how Heatmaps and Treemaps function as part of the CitiDirect® PRISM system, an industry first performance and risk reporting middle-office application using Panopticon data visualization technology. Learn more about the CitiDirect PRISM system.

While the Heat Map is primarily used in financial services applications, it also has a place in dashboards for monitoring and analysis of data in telecoms, energy, healthcare, and other corporate applications where decisions are based on large amounts of data.

Heatmaps are simplified Treemap visualizations

The Heat Map is very closely related to the more sophisticated Treemap data visualization, except that a Heatmap represents each item in the database as an equally-sized square, unlike a Treemap which uses the size of the box to represent a qualitative value, and location to represent hierarchical relationships. Essentially, a Heat Map is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors. As in a Treemap, the color of the square represents a quantitative value relative to the other boxes in the Heat Map, while the location can represent the sorting of another quantitative or categorical value. This allows the analyst to see all of the data items simultaneously. Just like our Treemap tool, the user can also hover over any item to bring up more detailed information on demand.

Spot outliers and trends in analytical dashboards

You can alter the color scale displayed in a Heatmap as needed in order to make it easier to spot outliers or reveal trends in the data sets you are examining.

Resize and re-sort data

Resizing the Heat Map will rearrange the boxes on the screen so that each box is represented as clearly as possible with the most equal aspect ratio. You can also re-sort all of the items displayed in the Heat Map by any of the columns within the data set.

Use flags to highlight problems & opportunities

Users can also select flags associated with useful parameters like "Top 10" or "Worst 10" that highlight differences between data items.

Connect Heat Maps to external systems

Panopticon's Heat Maps are designed to be connected to other systems. This means that you can program the system so that a single mouse click on a box in the Heat Map will launch another program. This might include something as simple as invoking a web browser to jump to a specific website containing more information about the item, or something more complicated like initiating a purchase order or a shipping change in a supply chain management system.

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