The bar chart is one of the most popular methods of displaying data. Be it comfort of your own home, school, exam room or workplace. Bar graphs are literally everywhere.
Whether you’re putting in an online pizza order or sending a rocket into space, you’ll encounter it. The bar chart will help you to get the job done.
Bar Charts can display any kind of information clearly and conveniently.
Also, the ability to make bar charts is one of the most in-demand skills in any industry.
While making a bar chart isn’t particularly difficult, making one that meets your specific needs can be tricky. It requires a fair amount of effort in deciding the appropriate parameter and plotting bar graph data in a reasonable format.
And things will get more difficult if you have no idea what a bar chart is and how it’s used in a particular field. You won’t be able to impress your boss with just an eye catchy bar chart.
But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. This blog I will show you step by step, on how to use Excel to create various bar charts, which is suited to your industry.
Also, we will take some examples on how to read and understand the bar chart. This will help you to rise and shine in every meeting your attend with your boss our client.
Bar chart Skill is a must for Project Management.
So, what is a bar chart?
Well, A bar chart is a graph that displays categorical data, using rectangular bars with proportional heights or lengths to their values.
It show the data relationship with the help of two axes.
On one axis it represents the categories, and, on another axis, it represents the discrete values.
Furthermore, the length of each bar is proportional to the value it represents.
The bar charts are used to compare data from different groups.
Also, Bar charts show the major changes in available data over time.
These bars can be plotted horizontally or vertically.
A vertical bar chart is also known as a column chart.
How to draw the bar charts?
Let’s look at an example to see how to make a bar chart.
Lisa’s mother requested that she purchase a few cakes for the Halloween party.
Lisa went to the market, to buy a variety of cakes in various quantities.
At the cake shop, she ordered 5 pineapple cakes, 3 mango cakes, 2 black forest cakes, 3 strawberry cakes, and 6 banana cakes.
Once she got home, she wanted to summarize her spending to her mother. She wanted to visualize the cake data by a bar chart, so that she could explain which type of cake she bought the most and where she spent the majority of his money.
Let us create a bar chart with this information.
Step number one : Draw the horizontal axis
Step number one is to draw the horizontal axis, we call it x-axis. This axis represents the different categories or types of items. For Lisa, this axis is basically representing the types of cake she bought. That is pineapple, mango, black forest, strawberry, and banana. Each bar represents one category.
Step number two : Draw a vertical axis
The second step is to draw a vertical axis. We call it y-axis. This axis represents the value of each category. For Lisa, this axis will represent the number of cakes she bought.
Step number Three : Fix Scale Parameter
Third step is to Fix the scale parameter on the vertical axis. Lisa’s data of cakes consist of 5, 3,2,6, so the appropriate scale would be one to ten.
Step number Four : Draw Rectangular Bars
The fourth step is to draw rectangular bars with height equal to value of each category. So for Lisa chart height of columns would be 5 for pineapple cakes, 3 for mango cakes, 2 for black forest cakes, 3 for strawberry cakes, and 6 for banana cakes.
Step number Five : Give a suitable title
The final step, give a suitable title of the bar chart for Lisa it could be “Most Bought Cake.
And now the bar chart is ready with the correct visual representation. Btw the way Lisa’s mother was impressed with her bar chart-making skills.
While drawing a bar chart it is necessary to mark four important parameters.
That is labels on axes, the title of a bar chart, the scale, and the name of the axes.
Lisa’s example was a simple demo of bar charts in real life. However, the use of bar charts in the professional world varies from simple financial charts to complex statistics models.
Step number one : Draw the horizontal axis
Step number one is to draw the horizontal axis, we call it x-axis. This axis represents the different categories or types of items. For Lisa, this axis is basically representing the types of cake she bought. That is pineapple, mango, black forest, strawberry, and banana. Each bar represents one category.
The second step is to draw a vertical axis. We call it y-axis. This axis represents the value of each category. For Lisa, this axis will represent the number of cakes she bought.
Third step is to Fix the scale parameter on the vertical axis. Lisa’s data of cakes consist of 5, 3,2,6, so the appropriate scale would be one to ten.
The fourth step is to draw rectangular bars with height equal to value of each category. So for Lisa chart height of columns would be 5 for pineapple cakes, 3 for mango cakes, 2 for black forest cakes, 3 for strawberry cakes, and 6 for banana cakes.
Final step, give a suitable title of the bar chart like for Lisa it could be “Most Bought Cake.
And now the bar chart is ready with correct visual representation. Btw way Lisa’s mother was impressed with bar chat making skills.
While drawing a bar chart it is necessary to mark four important parameters.
That is an labels on axes, the title of a bar chart, scale, and name of the axes.
Lisa’s example was a simple demo for bar chart in real life. However, the use of bar charts in the professional world varies from simple financial charts to complex statistics model.
Types of Bar Chart
Depending on the types of data and categories, Bar Charts are mainly classified into four types
Horizontal Bar Chart
The first type is called a “horizontal bar chart,” which is a graph in which the given data is represented by horizontal bars on graph paper. The measures of the provided data are displayed in these horizontal, rectangular bars. With this style, the x-axis and y-axis are labeled with the data categories. The bar chart’s horizontal representation is displayed in the y-axis category.
Vertical Bar Charts
The second type is Vertical Bar Charts. A vertical bar chart is a visual representation of the given data using vertical bars. The measure of the data is represented by these vertical rectangular bars. On the x- and y-axes, vertical lines are drawn to represent the rectangular bars. The number of the variables listed on the x-axis is represented by these rectangle-shaped bars.
Grouped Bar Charts
The bars in bar charts can be plotted horizontally or vertically. Amongst the two types, the most used bar chart type is the vertical bar chart.
Further, the vertical and horizontal bar charts are classified into two more category.
Third one is Grouped Bar Charts. The grouped bar chart is also referred to as the clustered bar chart. It represents the discrete value for two or more categorical data. For example, if the bar chart represents 3 groups with many variables (one group with 4 data values) then each value will be represented by different colors. The color coding for each group will be the same for similar data values.
Stacked Bar Charts
The fourth one is the Stacked Bar Charts. The stacked bar chart is also known as the composite bar chart. It shows the division of the whole bar chart into different parts. To easily identify the category, we use different colors bars and specific labeling. Thus, in a stacked bar chart one rectangular bar represents the whole parameter. In one bar we show multiple segments with different colors. Each segment in the bar shows the different parts of that respective label. It can be drawn vertically or horizontally.
So, this was all about the bar charts and it four types. Now the next question is how to efficiently draw these bar charts. I mean, manual chart is not very easy and faster way. For this tutorial we would be using the Microsoft excel tool.
So, lets deep dive in how to plot these bar chart in excel sheet.
