Column charts are best used to show which of the following?

Krishna Singh

Krishna Singh

Data Engineer at LTIMindtree

Published Oct 4, 2020

Building a chart in Excel in and of itself is not a terribly difficult thing to do. The hard part is getting your mind around which types of chart to use in which situation. Excel has 11 major chart types with variations on each type. For most business dashboards and reports, you will only need a handful of the chart types available in Excel, including the following:

• Line Chart: The line chart is one of the most frequently used chart types, typically used to show trends over a period of time. If you need to chart changes over time, consider using a line chart.

• Column Chart: Column charts are typically used to compare several items in a specific range of values. Column charts are ideal if you need to compare a single category of data between individual sub-items, such as, for example, when comparing revenue between regions.

• Clustered Column Chart: A clustered column chart can be used if you need to compare multiple categories of data within individual sub-items as well as between sub-items. For instance, you can use a clustered column chart to compare revenue for each year within each region, as well as between regions.

• Stacked Column Chart: A stacked column chart allows you to compare items in a specific range of values as well as show the relationship of the individual sub-items with the whole. For instance, a stacked column chart can show not only the overall revenue for each year, but also the proportion of the total revenue made up by each region.

• Pie Chart: Another frequently used chart is the old pie chart. A pie chart represents the distribution or proportion of each data item over a total value (represented by the overall pie). A pie chart is most effective when plotting no more than three categories of data.

• Bar Chart: Bar charts are typically used to compare several categories of data. Bar charts are ideal for visualizing the distribution or proportion of data items when there are more than three categories. For instance a bar chart could be used to compare the overall revenue distribution for a given set of products.

• Area Chart: Area charts are ideal for clearly illustrating the magnitude of change between two or more data points. For example, you can give your audience a visual feel for the degree of variance between the high and low price for each month.

• Combination Chart: A combination chart is a visualization that combines two or more chart types into a single chart. Combination charts are an ideal choice when you want to compare two categories of each individual sub-item. They are commonly used to create visualizations that show the difference between targets versus actual results.

• XY Scatter Plot Chart: Scatter charts in Excel (also known as XY scatter plot charts) are excellent for showing correlations between two sets of values. For example an XY scatter plot can be used to illustrate the correlation between employee performance and competency, demonstrating that employee performance rises as competency improves. The x and y axes work together to represent data plots on the chart based on the intersection of x values and y values.

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• Bubble Chart: A bubble chart is a variation of an XY scatter plot. Just like the XY scatter plot, bubble charts show the correlation between two sets of data. The difference is the addition of a third dimension that is represented by the size of each bubble in the chart. This third dimension is typically used to show the relative impact of a quantitative data item. For instance, in addition to showing employee performance versus competency, you can have the size of each bubble represent years of service, allowing your audience to quickly get a sense of how years of service may affect the relationship between competency and performance.

What Are Graphs and Charts in Excel?

Charts and graphs elevate your data by providing an easy-to-understand visualization of numeric values. While the terms are often used interchangeably, they are slightly different. Graphs are the most basic way to represent data visually, and typically display data point values over a duration of time. Charts are a bit more complex, as they allow you to compare pieces of a data set relative to the other data in that set. Charts are also considered more visual than graphs, since they often take a different shape than a generic x- and y-axis.

People often use charts and graphs in presentations to give management, client, or team members a quick snapshot into progress or results. You can create a chart or graph to represent nearly any kind of quantitative data — doing so will save you the time and frustration of poring through spreadsheets to find relationships and trends.

It’s easy to create charts and graphs in Excel, especially since you can also store your data directly in an Excel Workbook, rather than importing data from another program. Excel also has a variety of preset chart and graph types so you can select one that best represents the data relationship(s) you want to highlight.

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When to Use Each Chart and Graph Type in Excel

Excel offers a large library of chart and graph types to help visually present your data. While multiple chart types might “work” for a given data set, it’s important to select a chart type that best fits with the story you want the data to tell. Of course, you can also add graphical elements to enhance and customize a chart or graph. In Excel 2016, there are five main categories of charts or graphs:

• Column Charts: Some of the most commonly used charts, column charts, are best used to compare information or if you have multiple categories of one variable (for example, multiple products or genres). Excel offers seven different column chart types: clustered, stacked, 100% stacked, 3-D clustered, 3-D stacked, 3-D 100% stacked, and 3-D, pictured below. Pick the visualization that will best tell your data’s story.

• Bar Charts: The main difference between bar charts and column charts are that the bars are horizontal instead of vertical. You can often use bar charts interchangeably with column charts, although some prefer column charts when working with negative values because it is easier to visualize negatives vertically, on a y-axis.

• Pie Charts: Use pie charts to compare percentages of a whole (“whole” is the total of the values in your data). Each value is represented as a piece of the pie so you can identify the proportions. There are five pie chart types: pie, pie of pie (this breaks out one piece of the pie into another pie to show its sub-category proportions), bar of pie, 3-D pie, and doughnut.

• Line Charts:  A line chart is most useful for showing trends over time, rather than static data points. The lines connect each data point so that you can see how the value(s) increased or decreased over a period of time. The seven line chart options are line, stacked line, 100% stacked line, line with markers, stacked line with markers, 100% stacked line with markers, and 3-D line.

• Scatter Charts: Similar to line graphs, because they are useful for showing change in variables over time, scatter charts are used specifically to show how one variable affects another. (This is called correlation.) Note that bubble charts, a popular chart type, is categorized under scatter. There are seven scatter chart options: scatter, scatter with smooth lines and markers, scatter with smooth lines, scatter with straight lines and markers, scatter with straight lines, bubble, and 3-D bubble.

There are also four minor categories. These charts are more use case-specific:

• Area: Like line charts, area charts show changes in values over time. However, because the area beneath each line is solid, area charts are useful to call attention to the differences in change among multiple variables. There are six area charts: area, stacked area, 100% stacked area, 3-D area, 3-D stacked area, and 3-D 100% stacked area.

• Stock: Traditionally used to display the high, low, and closing price of stock, this type of chart is used in financial analysis and by investors. However, you can use them for any scenario if you want to display the range of a value (or the range of its predicted value) and its exact value. Choose from high-low-close, open-high-low-close, volume-high-low-close, and volume-open-high-low-close stock chart options.

• Surface: Use a surface chart to represent data across a 3-D landscape. This additional plane makes them ideal for large data sets, those with more than two variables, or those with categories within a single variable. However, surface charts can be difficult to read, so make sure your audience is familiar with them. You can choose from 3-D surface, wireframe 3-D surface, contour, and wireframe contour.

• Radar: When you want to display data from multiple variables in relation to each other use a radar chart. All variables begin from the central point. The key with radar charts is that you are comparing all individual variables in relation to each other — they are often used for comparing strengths and weaknesses of different products or employees. There are three radar chart types: radar, radar with markers, and filled radar.

Another popular chart is a waterfall chart, which is essentially a series of column graphs that show positive and negative changes over time. There is no Excel preset for a waterfall chart, but you can download a template to help make the process easier. For a full walkthrough, read 

What Is a Dashboard?

Dashboards track KPIs, metrics, and other data points in one visual, central place. They give you a high-level view of work, helping you make quick decisions and keeping everyone up to date. A dashboard’s visual nature simplifies complex data and provides an at-a-glance view of current status or performance in real time.

Dashboards are made up of tables, charts, gauges, and numbers. They can be used in any industry, for almost any purpose. For example, you could make a project dashboard, financial dashboard, marketing dashboard, and more.

Excel Dashboards Do’s and Don’ts

Let’s first start with the Dont’s!

Here are some of the things I recommend you avoid while creating an Excel dashboard. Again these would vary based on your project and stakeholder but are valid in most of the cases.

• Don’t Clutter Your Dashboards: Just because you have data and charts doesn’t mean it should go in your dashboard. Remember the objective of the dashboard is to help identify a problem or aid in taking decisions. So keep it relevant and remove everything that doesn’t belong there. I often ask myself if something is just good to have to absolutely must-have. Then I go ahead and remove all the good-to-haves.
• Don’t use volatile formulas: As it will slow down the calculations.
• Don’t keep extra data in your workbook: If you need that data, create a copy of the dashboard and keep it as the backup.

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Dashboard Examples

Dashboards are a collection of widgets that give you an overview of the reports and metrics you care about most. Dashboards let you monitor many metrics at once, so you can quickly check the health of your accounts or see correlations between different reports. Dashboards are easy to create, customize and share.