Choosing the Right charts for effective presentation of your data

How to select the appropriate chart best suited for your data type? 

There are a lot of ways of representing your data. And charts are the most interactive way  to put up your data in a visually appealing manner. Textual data can’t communicate as  efficiently, when compared to data visualization tools like charts and figures. 

Viewers look for graphic content as it makes an instant connection with their minds giving them the whole summary of the content that you want to convey. So, if you are making an  official presentation for clients or just curating a blog post for your infographics post, you  can use Charts to effectively say what you want without being boring. 

You can’t just use any chart for any kind of data. There are various factors you need to keep in mind while selecting the perfect chart. Your charts need to be scaled accordingly. 

There are mainly four types of charts:

Relationship 

If you want to show some connection or correlation between two or more than two  instances of an object. You can use the charts such as Scatter Charts or Bubble Charts. 

Comparison 

For showing infographics depicting comparison between products or any kind of object,  your best option is to choose a chart mentioned in the comparison’s category.  

They can help you to find the maxima and minima of your data, to compare increasing and  decreasing values. 

Distribution 

Distribution charts helps to identify the trends of a particular object over a period of time.  Histograms and Scatter Charts are best suited for this purpose. 

These charts are used to illustrate correlation between quantitative data points and for  distribution analysis in identifying values such as mean, median, range, outliers, etc. 

Composition

These charts help you to show comparisons made on a part to a whole. Usually helps to  visualize the data in percentages, with all the segments equalling to 100%. 

Identifying the right chart for your data: 

Relationship Charts: 

• Scatter Chart 

A scatter chart (also called a scatterplot, scatter graph, scatter plot, scatter gram,  or scatter diagram) is a type of plot or mathematical diagram using Cartesian  coordinates to display values for typically two variables for a set of data.

For example, to display a link between a person’s lung capacity, and how long that  person could hold their breath, a researcher would choose a group of people to  study, then measure each one’s lung capacity (first variable) and how long that  person could hold their breath (second variable). The researcher would then plot the  data in a scatter plot, assigning “lung capacity” to the horizontal axis, and “time  holding breath” to the vertical axis. 

A person with a lung capacity of 400 cl who held their breath for 21.7 seconds would  be represented by a single dot on the scatter plot at the point (400, 21.7) in  the Cartesian coordinates. The scatter plot of all the people in the study would  enable the researcher to obtain a visual comparison of the two variables in the data 

set, and will help to determine what kind of relationship there might be between the  two variables. 

• Bubble Chart 

A bubble chart is a type of chart that displays three dimensions of data. Each entity  with its triplet (v1, v2, v3) of associated data is plotted as a disk that expresses two of  the vi values through the disk’s (x, y) location and the third through its size. Bubble  charts can facilitate the understanding of social, economical, medical, and other  scientific relationships. 

Bubble charts can be considered a variation of the scatter plot, in which the data  points are replaced with bubbles. 

Comparison Charts 

• Line Charts 

A line chart or line plot or line graph or curve chartis a type of chart which displays  information as a series of data points called ‘markers’ connected by  

straight line segments. It is a basic type of chart common in many fields. It is similar  to a scatter plot except that the measurement points are ordered (typically by their  x-axis value) and joined with straight line segments. A line chart is often used to  visualize a trend in data over intervals of time (a time series) thus the line is often  drawn chronologically. In these cases, they are known as run charts.

• Bar Charts or Column Charts 

Bar graphs or charts are a way of visualizing the data according to their heights depicted as rectangular bars which gives the quantitative analysis of the data being  represented. 

Column charts are the same as bar charts. They just differ in their orientation. Bar  graph’s general orientation is horizontal. Whereas, for column charts, the  representation is usually vertical that shows a building like structures. These charts are efficient to visualize tabular data in an intuitive way. 

Fig: Example Column Graph 

Fig: Example Bar Graph 

Distribution Charts 

While scatter charts are also useful while depicting distribution charts. Histograms are  another powerful chart which gives approximate representation of the distribution of  numerical or categorical data.

• Histograms 

A histogram is a graphical display of data using bars of different heights. In a  histogram, each bar groups numbers into ranges. Taller bars show that more data  falls in that range. A histogram displays the shape and spread of continuous sample  data. 

It is similar to a Bar Chart, but a histogram groups numbers into ranges. Histograms give a rough sense of the density of the underlying distribution of the  data, and often for density estimation. 

To construct a histogram, the first step is to “bin” (or “bucket”) the range of values— that is, divide the entire range of values into a series of intervals—and then count  how many values fall into each interval. The bins are usually specified as consecutive,  

non-overlapping intervals of a variable. The bins (intervals) must be adjacent, and are  often (but not required to be) of equal size.

• 3-D Area Charts 

Suppose you want to represent some data set having 3-Variables. Line charts and Bar  graphs won’t help you. 

We use a 3-D area chart to represent those types of data. 

For e.g., In the below data we have 3 variables namely the month, company name  and their market share in each month. 

To represent this data efficiently, we can use a 3-D area chart which is very  informative as well as visually appealing.

Composition Charts 

These are the most widely used charts for data representation that includes pie charts, area  charts, waterfall charts, etc. 

We can represent these charts depending on the data type which can include dynamic  periodic data (Few or Many periods) or static data. 

Let us see some composition charts and their applications. 

• Pie Chart 

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

Make sure your segments add up to 100 and do not tilt or have 3-D imagery for your  pie charts as it may have adverse effect on the viewer side. Viewer might not be able  to understand the plot. 

• Waterfall Chart 

A waterfall chart is a form of data visualization that helps in understanding the  cumulative effect of sequentially introduced positive or negative values. These  intermediate values can either be time based or category based.

It is a type of column chart, used to show how an initial value is increased/decreased by a series of  intermediate values, to a final value. 

• Stacked 100% column chart 

A 100% stacked bar chart is an Excel chart type designed to show the relative  percentage of multiple data series in stacked bars, where the total (cumulative) of  each stacked bar always equals 100%. Like a pie chart, a 100% stacked bar chart  shows a part-to-whole relationship. However, unlike a pie chart, a 100% stacked bar  chart can show how proportions change over time, for example, product market  share changes per month, as shown below. 

It can show multiple categories and data series in a column space.  As these bars are stacked to 100%, hence absolute value dimension is lost.  

• Stacked Area Chart

A stacked area chart is the extension of a basic area chart. It is used to display various groups or components on the same graphic. The values of each group are  displayed on top of each other. Data visualised in this way is very understandable and immediately gives a sense of what is wants to convey. 

There are so many other chart styles out there. But we have discussed the main types to  give you an idea of how to choose your perfect chart according to your needs.  

Always prefer charts over textual information which contains a lot of numerical  information. It can help you to make a great first impression over the viewer and potentially  converting them into your permanent viewers (in case of blogs) or your clients. 

We hope you all got your answers regarding, choosing the best graph for your data.