1. Chart Format

Picking the right chart type is easy when you know a) the type of data you are working with and b) the question you are trying to answer. Every chart should answer a question. The chart answers the question in a concise, easy-to-read graphical format. The data quickly determines the chart type. For example, if you have time series data, a line chart best shows the change over time. In comparison, a bar chart measures quantities by category and subcategory.

There are over two dozen chart types and variations available in think-cell. For guidance on the best chart type for your data, refer to Figure 1.2¹.

The table below illustrates the most common types of charts. We will create a vertical bar, line chart, and waterfall chart in this tutorial.

Chart type	Data	Question?
Vertical bar 2	Categorical	What are the quantities of each category?
Horizontal bar	Categorical	What are the highest and lowest quantities by category/rank?
Column bar	Categorical	What are the quantities of the subcategories?
Line chart	Time series	How did x change over time?
Area chart	Multiple time series	How did each category proportional change over time?
Waterfall chart	Time series	How did the starting value change to its final value?

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1. Influenced by Andrew V. Abela (2020) and The Data Visualisation Catalogue↩︎

2. Clustered bar is the equivalent think-cell chart type for vertical horizontal, and column bar charts ↩︎