Learn how to design effective and powerful charts and graphs.
Once you have identified the audience for your chart, the metrics they need to see and the data that will power the metrics, it is time to select the right chart type for your data.
In this presentation, we show you how to convert your data into powerful information by selecting the right charts for expressing them.
How to choose the right chart type or graph for your data
1. Bar
Comparing things
like income?
Line
Get some lengthy
data like oil prices?
Area
Want to show contents
of e.g. exports?
Map
Need to show a
country comparison?
More
Choose yours!
Data Visualization 101
2. One dimension Two dimensions Three+ dimensions
Bar
LineAreaPie Picto
Scatterplot
Bubble
Comparison Tendency/Relations
Comparison/
Relationships
4. Most often the best choice. Good
to show differences in values that
don’t add up to 100%.
Poor choice for showing time-
series data, as the line charts
have a smoother representation.
Bar
Comparing things
like income?
6. Good for showing contrast when
two or three components of
something differ greatly in size.
Bad choice if you have more than
three variables or if their values
are similar in size.
Pie
Need to show a
country comparison?
8. Works well with 2-3 groups of
people compared and when
differences are significant.
A line chart is a better option
with more than three groups and
when differences are small.
Picto
Need to show a
country comparison?
10. Line
Get some lengthy
data like oil prices?
Best choice for time-series data
and highlighting trends, with not
more than three sets per chart.
May be visually misleading when
attempting to show data that is
not based on time-series.
Line
Get some lengthy
data like oil prices?
12. Good to show how a certain
variable grows/drops relative to
others over a period of time.
Careful when choosing between
basic and stacked layouts, as
they give different impressions.
Area
Want to show contents
of e.g. exports?
14. Good to find out how much one
variable depends on other e.g.
how strongly does it correlate.
Careful when choosing variables
that don’t correlate, as result can
be meaningless.
Scatter
Detect what is more
profitable
16. The best to understand social,
economical, medical, and other
scientific relationships.
Make sure your audience can
read the chart.
Bubble
Compare values and
show relationships