Bar Charts Unleashed: Unlocking the Power of Visual Data Representation
Properly visualizing data is crucial in today’s data-driven world, and bar charts stand as one of the most popular and versatile tools for this purpose. With their straightforward representation and ability to highlight comparisons and trends, bar charts are a staple in data analysis and presentation. In this article, we are going to discuss the bar chart and its uses as a widget.
What is a bar chart?
A bar chart is a graphical representation of data using rectangular bars to compare different values for a set of unordered items in categories. The length of each bar represents the quantity or frequency of a specific category or value. A bar is plotted horizontally and the length of the bar is proportional to the value it represents.
Types of bar charts
We have three types of bar charts:
- Simple bar chart: This is the most basic type of bar chart, used to represent a single data series. It is ideal for comparing values across different categories.
2. Stacked bar chart: This displays multiple data series in one bar using various colors, enabling comparison of individual values and overall totals.
3. 100% stacked bar chart: This represents multiple data series within one bar, displaying the percentage contribution of each series to the total rather than absolute values.
Benefits of using a bar chart to monitor performance in business
A clear visual representation of data facilitates insights and decision-making with your data. Some of the benefits of using a bar chart in Bold BI dashboard include:
- Visually appealing representation: Bar charts provide you with a clear and visually appealing representation of data.
- Defined comparison: Bar charts make it easy to compare different data sets side by side, allowing you to quickly identify areas where the business is performing well or not.
- Simplification of complex data: Bar charts help you simplify complex data by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable pieces, easing understanding.
- Easy creation and customization: Bar charts are relatively easy to create and customize using a variety of software tools available in Bold BI. Getting the look you want is quickly done.
- Monitoring progress: Bar charts are used to track the performance of a business over time, allowing you to monitor progress towards specific goals or targets.
- Highlighting outliers: Bar charts help you highlight outliers or unusual data points, which can be important in identifying potential issues or areas for further investigation.
How to configure a bar chart in Bold BI
To configure a bar chart:
- Choose the data to be represented.
- Label the x-axis with categories and the y-axis with values.
- Create bars for each category.
- Set the bar heights based on corresponding values.
- Use colors or patterns to distinguish the bars.
- Include a title, a legend if necessary, and axis labels for clarity.
Check out our documentation to learn more about configuring bar charts in Bold BI.
When to use a bar chart
Using a bar chart helps convey your data in a simple way. Here are some situations to consider a bar chart for:
- When you have long labels for many categories.
- When you need to use the category axis to present a lot of data sets.
- When there are more than five categories for the chart items.
- When you need to display the top 5 categories from a longer list.
When not to use a bar chart
On some occasions, the application of a bar chart is less ideal:
- When you want to display continuous data.
- When visualizing large data sets.
- When representing proportions or percentages.
- When showing relationships among multiple variables.
- When displaying precise or accurate measure comparisons.
Tips for using a bar chart
- Choose the right type of bar chart.
- Avoid using too many bars in a single chart, as it may become difficult to read and interpret.
- Use consistent and meaningful category names.
- Clearly label both the x-axis and y-axis and include a title for the overall chart to give context.
- Choose an appropriate scale for the y-axis that is easy to read and understand.
- Use different colors for each bar to make them easily distinguishable.
- Avoid using unnecessary gridlines, borders, or background colors that could clutter the chart and make it difficult to read.
- Check for accuracy to ensure that the bar chart accurately represents the information you want to convey.
- Provide context to help the viewer understand the story behind the data.
Bar chart use cases
Education: student participation rate by branch
This bar chart shows student participation in a school, where the education stakeholders can see the performance rate in each subject.
Survey analysis: most popular development environments
This bar chart shows the most popular development environments in a survey analysis done in the past year.
Retail: top-selling items
This bar chart shows the top-selling products for a business in the retail industry. This bar chart showcases items with long data labels.
Support: agent workload by ticket type
This bar chart shows the support agent workload by ticket type. The bar chart configures two functions, resolved and unresolved tickets.
Finance: top 5 customers by revenue
This bar graph shows the top 5 customers by revenue in a business’s finance dashboard.
Sales: number of products sold to customers
This bar chart displays the number of products sold to each customer. The clear labeling of values on the chart serves to enhance its usefulness.
IT: incomplete and overdue tasks by assignee
This example bar chart showcases the number of incomplete and overdue tasks of an IT project, divided into their assignees.
Government: top 10 accident types
This bar chart displays an analysis of the top 10 accident types, conducted by a government to enhance transport safety for users. With so many categories, information is made clearer by value labels and gridlines.
HR: training cost by course
This bar chart displays how much a major company spends on training by course. The formatting allows for easy comparison, empowering HR to make informed decisions on how to enhance training.
Agile: tasks by type
This bar chart shows the comparison of planned and completed tasks, helping an agile team to track their work efficiently.
Oil and gas: top 3 oil-producing wells
This bar chart shows the top 3 oil-producing wells in a company. It gives a visual of the performance of each well, which aids oil producers in understanding the current state of their drill sites.
Conclusion
After reading this blog, I hope you have a better understanding of bar charts and their potential uses in your dashboards.
Originally published at https://www.boldbi.com on May 31, 2023.
