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An Introduction to Bar Charts

Vidya Kesavan
November 03, 2016

An Introduction to Bar Charts

An introduction to types of bar charts, when to use them and how to effectively communicate information with bar charts

Vidya Kesavan

November 03, 2016
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  1. BAR CHARTS Bar charts are one of the simplest and

    most commonly used charts. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  2. BAR CHARTS Bar charts are one of the simplest and

    most commonly used charts. Let's assume you are a cereal company and you sell 6 brands of cereals. In this series we will see how to use Bar Charts to impress your boss, your customers and also to draw some cool insights from data. Your customers wonder how many calories are in per serving of your cereal brands. They obviously want to compare and pick their favorite cereal. You want to create a chart to show this data to your customers. So what should this chart do? www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  3. BAR CHARTS Let's assume you are a cereal company and

    you sell 6 brands of cereals. In this series we will see how to use Bar Charts to impress your boss, your customers and also to draw some cool insights from data. Your customers wonder how many calories are in per serving of your cereal brands. They obviously want to compare and pick their favorite cereal. You want to create a chart to show this data to your customers. So what should this chart do? The chart should show the number of calories per serving for each of the cereal brands. It should also allow comparison between individual brands. So let's start with a simple bar chart. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  4. BAR CHARTS Let's assume you are a cereal company and

    you sell 6 brands of cereals. In this series we will see how to use Bar Charts to impress your boss, your customers and also to draw some cool insights from data. Your customers wonder how much calories are in per serving of your cereal brands. They obviously want to compare and pick their favorite cereal. You want to create a chart to show this data to your customers. So what should this chart do? The chart should show the number of calories per serving for each of the cereal brands. It should also allow comparison between individual brands. So let's start with a simple bar chart. If you are not sure which chart to use, start with a bar chart. Most of the time bar charts will be an excellent choice to visualize your dataset. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  5. Bar charts can be horizontal or vertical depending on the

    alignment of the bars. HORIZONTAL BAR CHARTS www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  6. Bar charts can be horizontal or vertical depending on the

    alignment of the bars. HORIZONTAL BAR CHARTS A bar chart emphasizes the distinctness of each value. You can clearly see the calorie content for each brand. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  7. Bar charts can be horizontal or vertical depending on the

    alignment of the bars. HORIZONTAL BAR CHARTS A bar chart also enables comparison between individual values. You can easily compare the lengths here without having to refer to the quantitative scale. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  8. VERTICAL BAR CHARTS A vertical bar chart also a good

    fit. When using a vertical bar chart, ensure that the labels on the horizontal axis do not overlap with each other and are not rotated, like in the next example www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  9. VERTICAL BAR CHARTS – LONG LABELS Rotated horizontal axis labels

    are very hard to read. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  10. VERTICAL BAR CHARTS – LONG LABELS Rotated horizontal axis labels

    are very hard to read. Use a horizontal bar chart when the label names are long. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  11. REPRESENTING DATA OVER TIME Now that you have pleased your

    customers, it's time to dig into some sales data. In an annual report, you have been asked to present the sales data for Branful brand of cereals for the year of 2015. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  12. TIME SERIES Now that you have pleased your customers, it's

    time to dig into some sales data. In an annual report, you have been asked to present the sales data for Branful brand of cereals for the year of 2015. Representation of data over a period of time, be it hours, days, months, years, is called Time Series www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  13. TIME SERIES Use a bar chart in a time series

    to draw attention to individual values, for example, sales for the months of January and October. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  14. TIME SERIES Do not use a bar chart in a

    time series to draw attention to the overall shape. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  15. TIME SERIES Do not use a bar chart in a

    time series to draw attention to the overall shape. The overall shape is not clearly visible in a bar chart as it would require us to focus on the end of the bars, which is not very easy. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  16. TIME SERIES We interpret time horizontally from left to right.

    So use vertical bars to represent time series. Use this www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  17. TIME SERIES We interpret time horizontally from left to right.

    So use vertical bars to represent time series Use this Instead of this www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  18. DISPLAYING MANY VARIABLES Bar charts are very versatile. While bar

    charts can be used for the simplest of visuals, they can also be used to show and compare multiple variables. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  19. DISPLAYING MANY VARIABLES Bar charts are very versatile. While bar

    charts can be used for the simplest of visuals, they can also be used to show and compare multiple variables. Suppose your company wants to understand where and when to utilize the promotional budget based on the past quarterly sales. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  20. DISPLAYING MANY VARIABLES Bar charts are very versatile. While bar

    charts can be used for the simplest of visuals, they can also be used to show and compare multiple variables. Suppose your company wants to understand where and when to utilize the promotional budget. You set to work on the quarterly sales data for each cereal brand. There are multiple ways to visualize the quarterly sales data using bar charts. Let's start with the basic one, a clustered bar chart www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  21. CLUSTERED BAR CHART Clustered bar charts combine multiple variables into

    one chart. In our example, we want to show the quarterly sales for 6 cereal brands. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  22. CLUSTERED BAR CHART Clustered bar chart makes it easy to

    see the trend in all the brands. For instance, we can see that Fruitopia and Raisin Delight had some spiky quarters, but the other 4 brands had lesser fluctuation. Clustered bar charts combine multiple variables into one chart. Below is a clustered chart that shows quarterly sales for 6 cereal brands. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  23. CLUSTERED BAR CHART While clustered bar charts show the trends

    clearly, sometimes we may want to see how sales for a quarter compare to the overall sales. These are called a part-to-whole relationships. Clustered bar charts combine multiple variables into one chart. Below is a clustered chart that shows quarterly sales for 6 cereal brands. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  24. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  25. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. We can easily see the trends in total sales by cereal brand. For example, the sales for Q4 is less than Q3 with the exception of Branful. We can also see the relative trends for each quarter. For instance, Q3 is a pretty strong quarter for most cereal brands. For Frutopia, Q2 was good. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  26. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. Notice how it is easy to determine the sales for Q1 but not as easy to determine the sales for other quarters? www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  27. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. Notice how it is easy to determine the sales for Q1 but not as easy to determine the sales for other quarters? The value of Q1 sales is easy to find because all you need to do is look at the sales value on the scale and the value is right there. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  28. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. Notice how it is easy to determine the sales for Q1 but not as easy to determine the sales for other quarters? The value of Q1 sales is easy to find because all you need to do is look at the sales value on the scale and the value is right there. However to determine the sales for the rest of the quarters, you have to do some math. This is the disadvantage of stacked bars. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  29. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. Despite this disadvantage, stacked bar charts are useful in one circumstance- www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  30. STACKED BAR CHART Stacked bar charts portray a part to

    whole relationship. They display the proportion of the whole that each part contributes. Despite this disadvantage, stacked bar charts are useful in one circumstance- When you wish to display the total sales for each brand but also wish to give an approximate sense of the relative proportion of the quarterly sales. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  31. SIDE BY SIDE BARS/SMALL MULTIPLES This is disaggregation at its

    finest. We break down the chart into multiple smaller charts and arrange them in a way that aids comparison. These are a useful alternative to clustered bars and stacked bars. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  32. SIDE BY SIDE BARS/SMALL MULTIPLES This is disaggregation at its

    finest. We break down the chart into multiple smaller charts and arrange them in a way that aids comparison.These are a useful alternative to clustered bars and stacked bars. This chart allows us to compare the sales of one cereal brand across quarters (by scanning horizontally), compare the sales of all cereal brands for a quarter (by scanning vertically). www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  33. SIDE BY SIDE BARS/SMALL MULTIPLES This is disaggregation at its

    finest. We break down the chart into multiple smaller charts and arrange them in a way that aids comparison.These are a useful alternative to clustered bars and stacked bars. It is also very easy to look up for a particular value, like Branful sales for Q4. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  34. SIDE BY SIDE BARS/SMALL MULTIPLES This is disaggregation at its

    finest. We break down the chart into multiple smaller charts and arrange them in a way that aids comparison.These are a useful alternative to clustered bars and stacked bars. Whether you arrange the charts horizontally side by side or vertically on top of one another, depends on what you want to compare. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  35. SIDE BY SIDE BARS/SMALL MULTIPLES This is disaggregation at its

    finest. We break down the chart into multiple smaller charts and arrange them in a way that aids comparison. These are a useful alternative to clustered bars and stacked bars. The above arrangement makes it easier to focus on the sales for one cereal brand across all quarters. For example, sales for Crunchy Corn for all quarters. www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  36. BAR CHARTS IN SUMMARY 1. Use bar charts to show

    discrete values and aid comparison www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  37. BAR CHARTS IN SUMMARY 1. Use bar charts to show

    discrete values and aid comparison 2. Use them in a time series to emphasize on individual values, but remember to keep the time on the x-axis www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  38. BAR CHARTS IN SUMMARY 1. Use bar charts to show

    discrete values and aid comparison 2. Use them in a time series to emphasize on individual values, but remember to keep the time on the x-axis 3. Stack them up to show a part to whole relation www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  39. BAR CHARTS IN SUMMARY 1. Use bar charts to show

    discrete values and aid comparison 2. Use them in a time series to emphasize on individual values, but remember to keep the time on the x-axis 3. Stack them up to show a part to whole relation 4. Cluster them together to show a trend in a category www.daydreamingnumbers.com
  40. BAR CHARTS IN SUMMARY 1. Use bar charts to show

    discrete values and aid comparison 2. Use them in a time series to emphasize on individual values, but remember to keep the time on the x-axis 3. Stack them up to show a part to whole relation 4. Cluster them together to show a trend in a category 5. Break them up into small multiples to show correlation www.daydreamingnumbers.com