This visualization takes uses data on the top 50 Pokémon from the OU tier and visualizes the data from August of 2016. In the circle packing diagram, color is encoded by a Pokémon's type, which, while different from the standard use of color in such a diagram, is meant to highlight the Pokémon's type, an important aspect of the game. The outermost circle in gray represents all of the Pokémon. The next circle in represents a Pokémon's primary typing, which is what is listed first in the game code. The next circle after that is the Pokémon's secondary typing, or if it does not have one, it is represented as a "Pure (Type)" Pokémon. The final circle represents the Pokémon itself, and displays the Pokémon's overall usage in the tooltip, which is also encoded in the size of the circle.
Clicking on any of these innermost circles will change what Pokémon's data is displayed in the small multiples visualization below. Here an image of the Pokémon is displayed, as well as its name, typing, and the usage of its different Abilities, Items, and Moves. The usage represents which of these are most commonly used amongst players. For moves, the color of the bars are also colored by their type, as moves share the same typings as Pokémon do.
This is a chord diagram created in PowerBi using the Chord custom visualization from the Microsoft Store. The size of each segment is based on the size of the chords themselves. The chord sizes are based on the correlation between one Pokémon to another; that is to say, if you encounter one Pokémon, how likely is it that another Pokémon will be present on the same team. Color is based on the Pokémon's Primary Type, much like the other visualizations.
The user can hover over a Pokémon to see the sum of its correlations, as well as hover over a chord to see the correlation between two Pokémon. The user can also brush the visualization by clicking on a particular Pokémon.
The most interesting thing to note is the correlation between the size of the segments on this chart, since they represent a sum of the correlations between a Pokémon and certain teammates, and the usage of moves and items on the main visualization. To highlight my findings, I'd like to examine Azelf and Mew. These two are rather comprable Pokémon, with a shared Pure Psychic typing and relatively close usages of 6.1% and 4.1% respectively (rounded), and this is easily viewable in the circle packing diagram. However, when taking a look at the chord diagram, they vary vastly in size. Mew has an incredibly small segment, while Azelf has the largest. Azelf's correlation with its teammates is either around 60, or very low, around 2. Mew, on the other hand, has links that have a correlation of only 6 or less. While this sounds opposite of what the large numbers might say, this shows that Azelf is a much more niche Pokémon than Mew is. Azelf's five links of over 50 are with Pinsir-Mega, Dragonite, Manaphy, Excadrill, and Talonflame. This essentially means that if you were to encounter Azelf, the team most likely consists of all five of those other Pokémon. Mew, on the other hand, has very low correlations with other Pokémon, meaning that it is much more versatile, and can fill many more roles on different teams. This is supported by the data from the small multiples diagram. Mew has a large amount of moves displayed, and while some are defintely more commonly used than others, none even get close to 75% usage. Azelf, on the other hand, has four moves that are above 75% usage, and the rest fall far short at less than 15%. This means that even though Azelf is used more often than Mew, Azelf only fills a specific role on a specific team, whereas Mew can generally be splashed onto a variety of teams and perform a variety of roles.
The circle packing diagram is based on Professor Engle's example found here. The bar charts were based on code found here and here. The custom visualization used to help create the chord diagram can be found here. The images used are all offical artwork made by the Pokémon Company, and is considered fair use. They have been sourced from, and more information on the images can be found at Bulbapedia.