Bar Graph Chart Definition, Parts, Types, and Examples

The okcoin review range between the high price and low price of an asset is represented by the vertical height of a bar chart. This bar uses horizontal lines to note the opening and closing prices. A bar chart is a collection of price bars, with each bar showing price movements for a given period. Each bar has a vertical line that shows the highest and lowest prices reached during the period. The opening price is marked by a small horizontal line on the left of the vertical line, and the closing price is marked by a small horizontal line on the right of the vertical line.

What is Bar Graph Definition?

The horizontal axis at the bottom of a bar graph is called the x-axis. The purpose of a bar graph is to convey relational information quickly in a visual manner. For example, if data grouping includes three groups of students and their preference for chocolate or vanilla ice cream, each of the three bars would have an equivalent total length. However, the percentage of the bar colored brown for chocolate and white for vanilla would vary based on the relative percentage of each option for each group of students. Alternatively, you may wish to depict variance within each category with a different chart type such as the box plot or violin plot.

1. Bar charts remain one of the most effective tools for comparing categories, tracking trends, identifying outliers, and understanding part-to-whole relationships.
2. Explore the different types of bar charts and their uses, the pros and cons of bar charts and graphs, and the steps you can take to learn more about working with them.
3. An example of this type of chart could be a graph showing the amount of apples and oranges each of your friends has.
4. The two chart types show the same information but in different ways.
5. E.g.2. A survey of 50 students about their favorite season of the year is listed.

Not only does that baseline make it easier for readers to compare bar lengths, it also maintains the truthfulness of your data visualization. A bar chart (aka bar graph, column chart) plots numeric values for levels of a categorical feature as bars. Levels are plotted on one chart axis, and values are plotted on the other axis. Each categorical value claims one bar, and the length of each bar corresponds to the bar’s value.

How to Draw a Bar Graph?

Thus, a bar represents the whole, and each segment is a part of the whole. It represents the data set in a visual form, which helps to observe and analyze the data easily. Data representation gives a clear idea of what the information means by giving it visual context through graphs. A 1-minute bar chart, which shows a new price bar each minute, would be useful for a day trader but not an investor. A weekly bar chart, which shows a new bar for each week of price movement, may be appropriate for a long-term investor, but not so much for a day trader.

Bar Graph Types

During declines, the bars typically get longer, showing an increase in volatility. Declines are also marked by more down (red) price bars compared to up (green) bars. Because a bar chart shows the opening, high, low, and closing prices for each period, there is a lot of information that traders and investors can utilize. It presents exactly the same information as a bar chart, but with different aesthetics. Instead of bars, we have lines topped by dots at their endpoints.

Bar graphs are ideal for comparing quantities across different categories, showing changes over time (if the data points are few), or illustrating proportions. They work well when the dataset is not overly complex and when the categories are discrete rather than continuous. To create a bar graph in Excel, start by entering your data, select it, and then choose the bar graph option from the Insert menu. You can enhance the graph by adding data labels and other elements through the Chart Design tab​. It also makes it simple to compare different pieces of information.

A categorical variable takes discrete values, which can be thought of as labels. Examples include state or country, industry type, website access method (desktop, mobile), and visitor type (free, basic, premium). Some categorical variables have ordered values, like dividing objects by size (small, medium, large). While line charts are often the go-to for visualizing trends over time, bar charts can be just as effective, especially when comparing discrete time intervals.

Bar graphs can compare items or show how something changes over time. Also known as the clustered bar graph, it plots numeric values for levels of 2 or more categorical variables instead of one side-by-side. Here, the rectangular bars are grouped by position for levels of one categorical variable, with the same colors indicating the secondary category level within each group.

We also use the grouped bar chart when we compute statistical summary measures across levels of two categorical variables. Alternatively, bar charts can be used in the technical analysis of an asset or security over time. Bar charts used in technical analysis are very different compared to the regular bar charts used in data visualization. Bar charts, as a tool, can be used in two ways that are entirely different from each other. The first bar chart is used in data visualization that shows categorical data in the form of bars with varying heights or lengths based on the value it represents.

This can make it easier for people to quickly understand the meaning of the data. In addition, presenting data graphically rather than through text or the spoken word can be an efficient and faster way to communicate. This is an example of a double bar graph from which we can quickly identify the sport that is most popular of all and the least popular one. The title and labels give information about the number of items under certain categories which is essential for reading the graph.

He bought 6 kg of potatoes, 8 kg of onions, 5 kg of tomatoes, and 3 kg of capsicum. Error bars indicate the standard deviation for transaction amounts for each payment type. The variability is lower for credit and debit cards compared to the others. If the bars from a previous example were vertically oriented, the Team tick labels would need to be rotated in order to be readable. Roles of the vertical and horizontal axes may be reversed, depending on the desired application.

Yet dowmarkets comparing recent volume to volume over the last year can provide a technical trader with useful information for trading decisions. Bar charts are helpful in many situations, including those that call for analyzing or graphing categorical data. In any situation where data is split into multiple groups, a bar chart may be an excellent way to represent it visually. Such data are presented as either vertical or stacked bar graphs. The seasons on the x-axis represent the categorical data and the number of students on the y-axis represents the numerical possible values.