Bar Charts
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Simple Bar Charts
Bar charts are often used to illustrate data so that different categories can be compared.
The information is represented by a series of bars of the same width, displayed either vertically or horizontally. The height or length, respectively, represents the magnitude of the figures involved.
General Guidelines
- Use vertical or horizontal bars; horizontal bars look better when long labels are being used.
- Label both axes.
- Put bars in a logical order, e.g. arranged by age, or date, or length of bar, etc. etc. (as appropriate).
Here is an example with two bars in each grouped set
Comparisons of the Foot and Mouth Outbreaks in 1967 and 2001
More information on Grouped Bar Charts from a British Government statistics site
Stacked Bar Charts (Sectional Bar Charts)
The components of each bar in a stacked bar chart should show each component as a fraction (or percentage) of the whole.
Here is an example
It is recommended that you consider using stacked bar charts rather than pie charts if you need to compare more than three sets of data.
More information from a British Government statistics site
Some opinions from
Illinois University
Example quote :-
Two chart types that should always be avoided.
Two common charts easily produced by spreadsheet programs that should almost always be avoided are the
stacked bar chart and the pie chart. The stacked bar chart, made even worse by the use of 3-D effects in figure
3, makes it very difficult to estimate the values of the variables represented on the top of the bars. Similar
"stacking" can also been done with time series area charts and should be avoided as well.
Microsoft Excel differentiates between Bars (horizontal) and columns (vertical).
We will not be making such a distinction here, they will all bars
to us, whether horizontal or vertical..
You will see
that Excel offers about half a dozen different 'varieties' of bar chart. We will not be
explaining all these
different types - we will explain the basic ideas of the fundamental types of chart.
In a few cases, a separate type of chart offered by Excel will, in reality, just be a
slightly different form
of a type of chart mentioned here.
Having said the above, this is only by way of explanation for when you specifically need to use a spreadsheet.
For work on this Keyskills unit, we ask that you do not use Excel, or any other spreadsheet
A correct label for the vertical scale is
Words of Caution
Links to Other Sites
Microsoft Excel
Past Exam Questions
The chart shows the number of late trains each day at Dunbridge
for the weekdays 13-17 December 1999
