Scale Missing Values

Cars scatterplot of horsepower and fuel economy
Quantitative positions with nominal color.
Cars scatterplot of horsepower and fuel economy
Quantitative positions with nominal color.

Missing and invalid values

Point encodings can provide an unknown fallback inside their scale options:

program.encodeX({
  field: "value",
  scale: { domain: [0, 100], unknown: 20 }
});

The fallback is used for a missing or field-type-invalid input. For ordinal point position or appearance, it also handles a value outside an explicit domain. It never becomes a domain member. Output validation follows the channel: position uses a finite coordinate, color a non-empty string, size a non-negative area, opacity a value from 0 to 1, and shape one supported point shape.

This policy is intentionally limited to row-owned point items. A missing value inside a line/area path, bar aggregate, rule, xOffset group, or stroke-dash series could change item topology; those consumers reject unknown until they have a separate topology-safe policy. A direct unattached scale stores its fallback and defers channel validation until attachment. Set unknown: undefined with editScale to remove an existing fallback.

Scale overview · Encodings · Troubleshooting