There exist some guidelines on which colors should be used in the figures to ensure that they can be read by as many people as possible, such as color blind people (example (mirror)).
Are there any guidelines regarding the choice of the markers in a graph?
Code in python to generate the plot (in case the link gets broken):
#!/usr/bin/env python
import matplotlib.pyplot as pyplot
mark_dict = {
".":"point",
",":"pixel",
"o":"circle",
"v":"triangle_down",
"^":"triangle_up",
"<":"triangle_left",
">":"triangle_right",
"1":"tri_down",
"2":"tri_up",
"3":"tri_left",
"4":"tri_right",
"8":"octagon",
"s":"square",
"p":"pentagon",
"*":"star",
"h":"hexagon1",
"H":"hexagon2",
"+":"plus",
"D":"diamond",
"d":"thin_diamond",
"|":"vline",
"_":"hline"
}
def line_plot():
x_list = [1, 10, 30, 70]
y_list = [10, 20, 30, 40]
pyplot.clf()
for mark in mark_dict:
y_list = [y_val + 10 for y_val in y_list]
pyplot.plot(x_list, y_list, label=mark_dict[mark], marker=mark)
pyplot.legend(loc="best", prop={'size':11})
pyplot.savefig("markers.png")
def main():
line_plot()
if "__main__" == __name__:
main()