what would be a situation in which you could use an excel chart to present your data

How do you pick the right nautical chart or graph for your information?

If you lot take data you want to visualize, make certain you use the right charts. While your data might work with multiple chart types, it's upward to you to select the one that ensures your message is clear and authentic. Retrieve, data is just valuable if you know how to visualize information technology and give context.

We'll give you an overview of the dissimilar chart types and explain how to pick the right one.

What story does your data tell?

Before making a chart it's important to sympathise why you lot need i. Charts, maps, and infographics help people sympathise complicated data, find patterns, identify trends, and tell a story. Call up about the message you want to share with your audition.

Follow all-time charting practices. Your numbers demand to add together up and charts need to be scaled accordingly. What would you lot similar to evidence? In that location are four main types of charts:

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Comparison

Comparison charts are used to compare ane or more than datasets. They can compare items or show differences over time.

Human relationship

Relationship charts are used to show a connection or correlation between two or more variables.

Composition

Composition charts are used to display parts of a whole and change over time.

Distribution

Distribution charts are used to show how variables are distributed over time, helping identify outliers and trends.

Selecting the correct chart type

Inquire yourself how many variables do you want to bear witness, how many information points you want to display and how you want to scale your axis.

Line, bar and column charts correspond change over fourth dimension. Pyramids and pie charts display parts-of-a-whole. While scatter plots and treemaps are helpful if you lot have a lot of data to visualize.

Types of Charts

Line Charts

A line chart reveals trends or alter over fourth dimension. Line charts can exist used to testify relationships within a continuous data set, and can be applied to a wide variety of categories, including daily number of visitors to a site or variations in stock prices.

Best practices for creating line charts:

• Clearly label your axes - Make sure the viewer knows what they are evaluating.

• Remove distracting chart elements - Grids, varying colors, and bulky legends tin distract the viewer from quickly seeing the overall trend.

• Zoom in on the y-axis if your data ready starts higher up zero - In sure cases, changing the scale of the y axis makes information technology easier for.

• Avoid comparing more than than 5-7 lines - You don't desire your chart to get cluttered or hard to read. Visualize the information you demand to tell your story, nothing more.

Pie Charts

The pie chart is ane of the most used and hated chart types of all time. Pie charts are used to show parts of a whole. A pie nautical chart represents numbers in percentages, and the total sum of all the divided segments equals 100 percent.

All-time practices for creating pie charts:

• Make sure your segments add upwardly to 100 - Sounds obvious, but this is a common mistake.

• Keep it make clean and consistent. Compare just a few categories to get your betoken across. If the pie slices have roughly the aforementioned size, consider to use a bar or column chart instead.

• Avoid using 3-D imagery or tilt your pie chart - This oft makes your data impossible to read, considering your viewer is trying to rapidly compare angles.

Bar Charts and Cavalcade Charts

Bar and column charts are used to compare different items. Bars on a cavalcade chart are vertical while bars on a bar chart are horizontal. Bar charts are by and large used to assistance avoid clutter when one data label is long or if you have more than 10 items to compare. They are easy to understand and to create.

All-time practices for creating bar and column charts:

• Showtime the y-axis at zero - Our optics are sensitive to the area of confined on a chart. If those bars are truncated, the viewer might depict the incorrect conclusions.
• Label the axes - Labelling the axes gives your viewer context.
• Put value labels on bars - This helps to preserve the clean lines of the bar lengths.
• Avoid using too many colors "rainbow outcome".  Using a single color, or varying shades of the aforementioned color, is a much better practice. You can highlight i bar in particular if that is the bulletin you lot want to go across.

Treemap

Treemaps evidence parts of a whole.  They brandish hierarchical information as a cluster of rectangles varying in size and color, depending on their data value.  The size of each rectangle represents a quantity, while the color can correspond a number value or a category.

Treemaps allow you to view trends and brand comparisons rapidly – especially if one colour is specially prominent. While spreadsheets can show multiple rows of information, treemaps tin can accommodate hundreds of thousands of items in one organized display, making it like shooting fish in a barrel to spot patterns in seconds. Plus, if fabricated correctly, they brand very efficient employ of infinite.

Best practices for creating a Treemap

• Get-go with clean data and a clear message - Treemaps can often involve a lot of data, then it's important to know exactly what yous want to highlight.
• Utilize brilliant, contrasting colors then each region is hands de ned - Just, remember to avoid the 'rainbow eastward ect.' Cull your colors wisely.
• Label each region appropriately with text or numbers -  is makes it easier for the viewer to evaluate your treemap speedily, without error.
• Avoid clutter your treemap with too many boxes - Treemaps can contain any number of boxes, just space is express! Y'all don't want your treemap to be hard to read.

Dual Axis Chart

With a dual centrality chart you are essentially combining multiple charts and adding a 2d y-centrality for comparison. Some members of the information visualization community are skeptical nearly the utilize of dual axis charts considering they tin can oftentimes be confusing, poorly designed, and misleading to the viewer.

Let's go over the unlike types of dual centrality charts and the best ways to use them:

Column and Line Chart– This dual axis chart combines a column chart with a line chart.

Dual Line Chart – This dual axis chart compares 2 line charts. There can be more than than two lines if demand be.

Dual Column Nautical chart– This dual axis column nautical chart shows two sets of data displayed side by side.

Multiple Axes Chart – This displays the most complex version of the dual axis nautical chart. Here you see three sets of data – with 3 y-axes.

Surface area Chart

Expanse charts are a lot like line charts, with a few subtle differences. They can both show change over time, overall trends, and continuity across a dataset. Only, while area charts may role the same manner every bit line charts, the infinite between the line and centrality is filled in, indicating volume.

Best practices for creating Area charts

• Make it piece of cake to read - Avoid occlusion. This happens when one or more layers covers important information on the nautical chart.

• Utilise a stacked expanse chart - If yous have multiple data sets and desire to emphasize part-to-whole relationships.

• Use area charts to look at the bigger picture - Take population for instance: Line charts are proficient for showing net change in population over time, while area charts are good for showing the total population over time.

• Avoid comparing also many datasets.  Use instead a line chart, its cleaner.

• Give the proper context with appropriate labels and legends.

Pyramid Chart

Pyramid charts (triangle chart or triangle diagram) are a fun way to visualize foundation based relationships.  ey appear in the form of a triangle that has been divided into horizontal sections with categories labeled according to their hierarchy. They tin be oriented up or downwards depending on the relationships they represent. The stacked layers tin likewise evidence the order of steps in a detail procedure.

Best practices for creating Pyramid Charts

• Option a topic and clearly characterization your subcategories - Decide what information you lot want to convey with your pyramid and conspicuously label your layers.

• Organize your subcategories - Decide the social club and value of each section on your pyramid.

• Organize the subcategories based on their hierarchy.

• Be consistent - Keep the spacing of your sections even and option a pleasing color palette.

• Keep subcategories to a minimum.  Adding many layers and colors tin make your pyramid difficult to read.

Word Cloud

Discussion clouds (besides known as tag clouds) are a type of weighted list. Word clouds display text in varying font sizes, weight, or colors to show frequencies or categories. They can be bundled alphabetically or at random. They help people place trends and patterns that might have been difficult to see otherwise.

All-time practices for creating a Discussion Cloud

• Provide context - Discussion clouds are visually center-catching and provide data about frequency but they often don't give the viewer any context.

• Utilise give-and-take clouds to prove frequency - Avoid using them to display complex topics similar the upkeep or healthcare crisis.

• Watch your discussion length - Longer words accept up more space and can be misleading.

• Word clouds are great for filtering and analyzing data.

• Avoid making your words too similar in size or color.

Tables

Tables display information in rows and columns. Tables brand information technology easy to compare pairs of related values or to display qualitative information (east.g. quarterly sales over several years).

At that place are multiple reasons you might select a table over a graph, every bit the right fashion to visualize your data.

Best practices for creating reporting tables

• Enquire yourself how your table volition be used and define your audience.
• Consider removing grid lines to increment readability.
• E'er include the source(south) of your data

• Numbers should be aligned to the right, because it makes easier to compare. Text can exist aligned left, just you lot might prefer to centre it for readability.

• Utilize color or formatting to describe the viewer to specific values (cells) in your table.

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Source: https://infogram.com/page/choose-the-right-chart-data-visualization

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