What do charts do

States with severe outbreaks often were colored red, those with less severe outbreaks were orange and those with even fewer cases were yellow. Viewers could quickly assess the severity of the outbreaks in their state or region. Scatter plots use dots to show the relationship between two variables. For instance, you might compare the players' average height on 10 basketball teams against the number of games each won during the season.

The horizontal axis would show the number of games won, and the vertical axis, each team's average height. If a team's average height is 6 feet, 4 inches and it won 25 games, you'd place a dot where those two variables on the axes intersect. As you fill out the chart for each team, you can determine how strongly height correlates with the number of games won. In interpreting scatter plots, it's important to keep in mind that they show correlation, but not necessarily causation.

Whether one variable — in the above example, team height — causes the other variable — games won — would require further investigation. A dual axis chart allows you to show the relationship between two sets of variables. In a business setting, the two variable sets often are revenue and net profit. Dual axis charts also often combine several chart types. In this example, you might use bar charts to show monthly revenue and a line chart to represent profit.

Gantt charts are used to manage project schedules. The horizontal axis shows the time frame, while the tasks required to complete the project are on the vertical axis.

The bar for each task correlates with its start and end date. Radar charts are one way to represent multiple variables. In other words, instead of two axes, radar charts typically incorporate between five and eight. You might use a radar chart to compare the strengths, such as size, market penetration and number of product lines, of different competitors. You'd rank each competitor on each attribute, with each angle joined in the chart referring to a specific attribute.

These are similar to bar charts in that the length of each column corresponds with the value of the data it represents. They're well suited for comparing several sets of data over time. For example, you might use a column chart to show sales of both red T-shirts and blue T-shirts by month over the past year. Each month identified on the horizontal axis would incorporate two columns: one for the red T-shirts and another for the blue.

A pictograph uses pictures or symbols to display data. A pictograph with multiple rows of people in different colors could show how many people work in different departments at a company. For instance, all the people in green might work in sales and those in yellow in accounting. Venn diagrams use overlapping circles to show how data sets overlap. The greater the degree of overlap between the data, the more the circles themselves will overlap. Say you want to show how many customers purchase Product A, Product B or both.

To ensure your chart adds interest to your presentation and engages your audience or viewers, a few steps are key:. Assess the information you need to present. Consider your audience and how they'll use the information. For instance, charts used in a presentation to the executive team often need to quickly convey information that helps them make decisions. Conversely, a project manager would use a detailed Gantt chart to help keep a project on schedule.

In this example, the green columns represent the Romance data series. The title should clearly describe what the chart is illustrating. The vertical axis , also known as the y axis , is the vertical part of the chart. In this example, a column chart, the vertical axis measures the height— or value —of the columns, so it is also called the value axis.

However, in a bar chart, the horizontal axis would be the value axis. Once you insert a chart, a set of chart tools arranged into three tabs will appear on the Ribbon.

These are only visible when the chart is selected. You can use these three tabs to modify your chart. Sometimes when you create a chart, the data may not be grouped the way you want. In the clustered column chart below, the Book Sales statistics are grouped by Fiction and Non-Fiction , with a column for each year. However, you can also switch the row and column data so the chart will group the statistics by year , with columns for Fiction and Non-Fiction.

In both cases, the chart contains the same data —it's just organized differently. Some layouts include chart titles , axes , or legend labels.

To change them, place the insertion point in the text and begin typing. By default, when you add more data to your spreadsheet, the chart may not include the new data. To fix this, you can adjust the data range. Simply click the chart, and it will highlight the data range in your spreadsheet.

You can then click and drag the handle in the lower-right corner to change the data range. Our visual processing system is not well suited to comparing these types of visual areas. We are also not good at holding precise visual imagery in our memory and comparing it to new stimuli; if you are giving a presentation and want the audience to be able to compare two charts, they need to be on the same slide. Andy Kriebel, Stacked Area Cart vs.

Adding too much information to a single chart eliminates the advantages of processing data visually; we have to read every element one by one! Try changing chart types, removing or splitting up data points, simplifying colors or positions, etc. It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older.

This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. It is a companion to the visualization services provided by Data and Visualization Services at Duke University Libraries.

Do use the full axis. Avoid distortion. Consistent intervals: Finally, using the full axis also means that you should not skip values when you have numerical data. Do simplify less important information. Do be creative with your legends and labels. Possibilities: Label lines individually Gregor Aisch, Doing the Line Charts Right Rotate bars if the category names are long Cole Nussbaumer, my penchant for horizontal bar charts Put value labels on bars to preserve the clean lines of the bar lengths Cole Nussbaumer, my penchant for horizontal bar charts 4.

Do pass the squint test. What color pops out? The goal is to show the relationship between the two axes. Bar graphs are easy to understand, widely used, and can show changes over time. That gives them an advantage over other graphs that are difficult to read or can only show a single data set. Bar graphs are used to compare things between different groups or to track changes over time. However, when trying to measure change over time, bar graphs are best when the changes are larger.

Bar graphs transform the data into separate bars or columns. Generally, this type of visuals have categories on the x-axis and the numbers on the y-axis.

So, you can compare statistical data between different groups. The bar graphs show which category is the largest and which is the smallest one. A bar graph is a two-dimensional display of data in a bar format. This format allows you to compare characteristics and frequencies such as quantity and price between and within groups of data. Required bar graph titles include the name of the graph, the title of the vertical axes, and the title of the horizontal axes.

Although the graphs can be plotted vertically bars standing up or horizontally bars laying flat from left to right , the most usual type of bar graph is vertical. The horizontal x axis represents the categories; The vertical y axis represents a value for those categories. Histograms are used to show distributions of variables while bar charts are used to compare variables. Histograms plot quantitative data with ranges of the data grouped into bins or intervals while bar charts plot categorical data.

A multiple bar graph shows the relationship between different values of data.