Bar chart
A bar chart compares amounts across categories: each bar is a category and its length is the number. Use it to see which branch sold the most.
Select any words here to ask your Maestro about them.
If the axis starts at 90 instead of 0, how many times taller do you think the 100 bar looks than the 92 bar?
What it's for: sales by branch, complaints by product, students by class. The eye compares lengths at a glance.
Start the axis at 0. Cut it and the bar lengths lie, as in the figure. To show small differences, use dots or a table. Sort the bars biggest to smallest unless the order means something, and lay them on their side when the labels are long.
A histogram looks similar, but it counts how many values fall in each range of one number, and its bars touch. To see how two numbers move together, use a scatter plot. In Excel: select your data, then Insert › Column or Bar Chart.
How it's used
Bars, lines or pie?
Before you insert the chart
- marked: Comparing separate things (branches, products)? Bars.
- Showing how something changes month to month? A line.Time reads best as one continuous stroke.
- Long labels? Horizontal bars.In Excel, horizontal ones are called Bar; vertical ones are Column.
- Sort them biggest to smallest, unless the order already means something (months, age ranges).
- Parts of a whole? Bars again: the eye compares lengths better than pie-slice angles.
When to look closer
Why does my Excel chart exaggerate the differences?
Format Axis › Bounds
- Minimum: 90 (auto)The 100 bar looks 5 times the 92 bar.
- Maximum: auto
Excel started the axis at 90. What do you think happens to the bars if you set it to 0?
Ask your Maestro about Bar chart
It answers from the free course page closest to this word, the way it answers while you study.
You: What does "Bar chart" mean, in plain words?
Your Maestro: I'll explain it with a case of yours: it sticks better than a definition. Which chart in your last report starts its axis above zero?
Asking about: Answers from the page "What do you compare a KPI against? The target, last week and the trend"
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Related terms
- Histogram
A histogram shows how the values in a column of numbers are spread out: it cuts them into ranges of equal width and draws one bar per range, as tall as the number of values that fall in it.
- Scatter plot
A scatter plot draws one dot per case, with one variable on each axis, to show whether two numbers move together: when one goes up, does the other go up, go down, or do nothing?
- Log scale
A log scale is an axis where each equal step multiplies the value instead of adding to it, so 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 sit evenly spaced.