Bar Chart vs Column Chart — What is the difference?
Both bar and column charts display discrete categorical data and answer the question of ‘how many?’ or ‘how much?’ in each category. The categories are usually qualitative data such as movie titles, types of houseplants or geographical locations. Bar and column charts are different to histograms as they do not show continuous developments over any interval. Different types of data may suit either a bar chart or a column chart better.
Bar Chart
Bar charts use horizontal bars to display data and are used to compare values across categories. The lengths of the bars are proportional to the values they represent. For a bar chart the Y axis typically displays a category such as top grossing movies of 2019 in the example below, whilst the X axis displays a discrete value.
Column Chart
A simple column chart uses vertical bars to display data. Column charts are used to compare values across categories and can be used to show change over a period of time. In the case of showing change over a period of time, a column chart can also be displayed as a line chart. In a column chart the Y axis typically displays a discrete value whilst the X axis displays the category.
Some best practice tips:
- Use a bar chart if you have long titles to display for each category, this will make your chart more readable.
- A column chart is useful when representing data sets over a period of time as this can indicate any trends
- Keep it simple — column charts can become difficult to read if there are too many categories
- Consider arranging your data for both column charts and bar charts in ascending or descending order to make them easier to read
