One of the most commonly used objects is the bar chart. It can provide you an answer on the question ‘how many’ for a specific time and for different categories at once. Let’s dive into more detail.
The classic bar chart uses horizontal bars to compare numeric values across different categories. The longer the bar, the higher the value, which is displayed on the horizontal axis. It is also possible to group data from one bar into subdivisions to give even more insights inside a category itself, which goes by the name stacked bar chart.
The bar chart can be found underneath the bar & columns charts section. By drag & dropping it into the canvas, data can be added to the three dataslots ‘category’, ‘measure’ and ‘group by’. Let’s focus on each of them.
Columns with data types ‘hierarchy’ and ‘date time’ are a perfect fit for this slot.
The data added to the category slot defines the number of bars - or categories - that will appear, as such five different values will result in five bars. The measures from the same value will be aggregated into one bar.
The example below demonstrates how a column with product names is added to the chart. Without measure data, each bar represents the number of rows per product found in the dataset, which is like the count rows aggregation.
Columns with data type ‘numeric’ are a perfect fit for this slot.
The measure slot defines the numeric value of a category. The higher the value, the longer the bar. Different aggregations can be set in order to be able to execute different calculations, e.g. the average.
In this example, we use a column containing volume data to show the amount of sales per product. The way of displaying the numbers on the axis can be changed in the slot settings.
Columns with data type ‘hierarchy’ are a perfect fit for this slot.
This third slot gives the opportunity to analyze data in an extra dimension. By adding data, the bars will show subdivisions resulting in enhanced insights. This is a really powerful feature and has three different modes : grouped, stacked and 100% stacked.
If you want to enable your viewers to play around with the three stacked modes, you can activate a drop down menu in the chart itself to make this possible.
It is not always easy to interpret the exact values, luckily you can toggle on the option ‘show values’ in the general settings of the charts and choose between multiple options like displaying percentages. This makes your life easier!
Sometimes, you only want to display the top five categories, which is possible by activating a limit. You can also choose their way of sorting - ascending or descending depending on the measure or the category names.
Want to know the average measure of your categories? This is really easy to obtain by adding a guideline. Play around with the layout options there.
The legend in this chart can be used to show or hide specific elements by clicking them.
Charts that are similar to the bar chart, are the column and pyramid chart.
If you have further questions on this topic, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are happy to help!