Which Graphical Representation Would Most Accuratley Convey Data Generated

How do you choice the right chart or graph for your data?

If you have data you want to visualize, make sure you use the correct charts. While your information might piece of work with multiple nautical chart types, it's upwardly to you to select the one that ensures your message is articulate and accurate. Call up, information is only valuable if you know how to visualize it and give context.

Nosotros'll give you lot an overview of the unlike chart types and explain how to pick the correct 1.

What story does your information tell?

Before making a chart it's important to understand why you need 1. Charts, maps, and infographics help people understand complicated information, detect patterns, place trends, and tell a story. Think about the message yous want to share with your audition.

Follow best charting practices. Your numbers need to add upwards and charts need to be scaled accordingly. What would yous like to testify? There are 4 main types of charts:

select chart type

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Comparison

Comparison charts are used to compare one or more than datasets. They can compare items or testify differences over fourth dimension.

Relationship

Relationship charts are used to testify a connectedness or correlation between two or more variables.

Composition

Limerick charts are used to brandish 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 right chart blazon

Ask yourself how many variables practice you desire to show, how many data points you want to display and how you want to scale your centrality.

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

Types of Charts

Line Charts

line chart examples

A line chart reveals trends or change over time. Line charts can be used to bear witness relationships inside a continuous data ready, and can exist applied to a wide multifariousness of categories, including daily number of visitors to a site or variations in stock prices.

Best practices for creating line charts:

Conspicuously characterization your axes - Make sure the viewer knows what they are evaluating.
Remove distracting chart elements - Grids, varying colors, and bulky legends tin can distract the viewer from quickly seeing the overall trend.
Zoom in on the y-axis if your information set starts above zero - In certain cases, changing the scale of the y axis makes it easier for.
Avoid comparing more than than five-vii lines - You don't want your chart to become chaotic or difficult to read. Visualize the data you need to tell your story, aught more.

Pie Charts

pie chart example

The pie chart is one of the nearly used and hated nautical 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.

Best practices for creating pie charts:

Brand certain your segments add up to 100 - Sounds obvious, but this is a common fault.
Keep information technology clean and consistent. Compare just a few categories to go your signal across. If the pie slices have roughly the same size, consider to utilize a bar or column nautical chart instead.
Avert using 3-D imagery or tilt your pie chart - This often makes your data impossible to read, because your viewer is trying to quickly compare angles.

Bar Charts and Column Charts

column chart

Bar and cavalcade charts are used to compare different items. Bars on a cavalcade chart are vertical while bars on a bar nautical chart are horizontal. Bar charts are generally used to help avoid clutter when 1 data label is long or if you have more ten items to compare. They are easy to sympathize and to create.

Best practices for creating bar and column charts:

Start the y-axis at zilch - Our eyes are sensitive to the area of bars on a chart. If those confined are truncated, the viewer might draw the wrong conclusions.
Characterization the axes - Labelling the axes gives your viewer context.
Put value labels on confined - This helps to preserve the clean lines of the bar lengths.
Avoid using also many colors "rainbow effect". Using a single colour, or varying shades of the same color, is a much better practice. You can highlight i bar in particular if that is the message you desire to get beyond.

Treemap

Treemaps bear witness 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 lot to view trends and brand comparisons quickly – especially if one color is specially prominent. While spreadsheets can show multiple rows of data, treemaps tin accommodate hundreds of thousands of items in 1 organized display, making it like shooting fish in a barrel to spot patterns in seconds. Plus, if made correctly, they brand very efficient utilise of infinite.

All-time practices for creating a Treemap

Start with make clean data and a clear bulletin - Treemaps tin can oft involve a lot of information, and so information technology'southward important to know exactly what you desire to highlight.
Use bright, contrasting colors so each region is easily de ned - But, call up to avert the 'rainbow e ect.' Choose your colors wisely.
Label each region appropriately with text or numbers - is makes it easier for the viewer to evaluate your treemap quickly, without fault.
Avoid clutter your treemap with likewise many boxes - Treemaps tin contain any number of boxes, but space is limited! You don't want your treemap to exist difficult to read.

Dual Axis Chart

With a dual axis chart you are essentially combining multiple charts and adding a second y-axis for comparison. Some members of the data visualization community are skeptical about the utilize of dual axis charts because they can often be confusing, poorly designed, and misleading to the viewer.

Let'southward go over the different types of dual axis charts and the all-time ways to use them:

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

Dual Line Nautical chart – This dual axis chart compares two line charts. At that place tin be more two lines if demand be.

Dual Cavalcade Chart– This dual axis column chart shows ii sets of information displayed next.

Multiple Axes Nautical chart – This displays the most complex version of the dual axis nautical chart. Here y'all see three sets of information – with three y-axes.

Area Chart

Area charts are a lot like line charts, with a few subtle differences. They can both show modify over time, overall trends, and continuity across a dataset. Just, while surface area charts may function the aforementioned way equally line charts, the space between the line and axis is filled in, indicating volume.

Best practices for creating Area charts

Make information technology easy to read - Avoid occlusion. This happens when one or more layers covers important information on the chart.
Use a stacked area chart - If you have multiple information sets and desire to emphasize function-to-whole relationships.
Use expanse charts to look at the bigger film - Accept population for example: Line charts are good for showing cyberspace change in population over time, while area charts are good for showing the total population over time.

Avert comparing too many datasets. Use instead a line nautical chart, its cleaner.
Give the proper context with appropriate labels and legends.

Pyramid Nautical chart

pyramid chart example

Pyramid charts (triangle nautical chart or triangle diagram) are a fun mode 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 can be oriented up or down depending on the relationships they represent. The stacked layers tin can too show the lodge of steps in a detail procedure.

Best practices for creating Pyramid Charts

Choice a topic and clearly label your subcategories - Decide what information yous want to convey with your pyramid and clearly characterization your layers.
Organize your subcategories - Decide the lodge and value of each section on your pyramid.
Organize the subcategories based on their hierarchy.
Be consistent - Go on the spacing of your sections even and pick a pleasing color palette.
Keep subcategories to a minimum. Adding many layers and colors tin make your pyramid difficult to read.

Word Cloud

word cloud example

Word clouds (also known every bit tag clouds) are a type of weighted list. Word clouds brandish text in varying font sizes, weight, or colors to show frequencies or categories. They tin can exist arranged alphabetically or at random. They help people identify trends and patterns that might take been difficult to meet otherwise.

Best practices for creating a Word Cloud

Provide context - Give-and-take clouds are visually heart-catching and provide data about frequency but they ofttimes don't give the viewer whatsoever context.
Use word clouds to bear witness frequency - Avoid using them to display circuitous topics like the upkeep or healthcare crunch.
Watch your word length - Longer words have up more space and can be misleading.
Word clouds are corking for filtering and analyzing data.
Avert making your words too like in size or color.

Tables

table

Tables brandish information in rows and columns. Tables make it like shooting fish in a barrel to compare pairs of related values or to display qualitative data (eastward.g. quarterly sales over several years).

There are multiple reasons you might select a table over a graph, as the right way to visualize your information.

All-time practices for creating reporting tables

Ask yourself how your tabular array will be used and ascertain your audience.
Consider removing filigree lines to increase readability.
Always include the source(southward) of your data
Numbers should be aligned to the right, because it makes easier to compare. Text can exist aligned left, only you might prefer to center it for readability.
Use color or formatting to draw the viewer to specific values (cells) in your tabular array.