The Starfish Diagram: Visualising Data Within the Context of Survey
  Samples
  As astronomy becomes increasingly invested in large surveys, the ample
representation of an individual target becomes a significant challenge.
Tabulations of basic properties can convey the message in an absolute sense,
but not within the context of the sample from which the individual is drawn. We
present a novel but simple plot that simultaneously visualises the properties
of the sample and the individual. Numbers and characters are kept at an
absolute minimum to enable the stacking of such plots without introducing too
much verbal information. Once the user becomes accustomed to their appearance,
a set of 'starfish diagrams' provide a direct representation of the individual
within a sample, or between various samples. The utility and versatility of the
plot is demonstrated through its application to astrophysical data and sports
statistics. We provide a brief description of the concept and the source code,
which is simple to adapt to any statistical dataset, be it descriptive of
physics, demographics, finance, and more.
