Bar vs. Line Chart – Part 2
In the first part to this series, I revealed an alternative to the stacked bar chart that GE used in their 2006 annual report. This post adds a few additional options to consider instead of the original stacked bar chart I found to be ineffective.
The first illustration (below) is another attempt at a vertical panel chart instead of the original stacked bar chart. The advantage to using this style is how clean it looks and how effectively it shows the trend of each business segment over the five years. The downside is the amount of manipulation it takes to format the charts to be effective. I would almost always prefer a line graph when time is present along the x-axis. A bar chart uses too much ink, which takes longer for your eye to see the trend.
The next chart (below) is a simple attempt at showing the business segment trend using sparklines. I am not a big fan of this chart for a few reasons. First, it uses bars, which I said above is not my first choice. Secondly, there are only five years of data, which makes for a small sample to depict in a mini-graph. Sparklines are designed to show as much data as possible using minimal real estate. You will typically see sparklines used to show a time series of stock prices or indices.
Finally, I have added a waterfall chart to show the breakdown of revenue between GE’s business segments for 2006. This chart is great when you don’t need time across the x-axis. The primary purpose of waterfall charts is to show how an initial value is increased or decreased by a series of values. For this illustration, I modified the chart so it starts at zero. It can also replace the dreaded pie chart or just serve as something different.
The next post, part 3, in this series will reveal my preference for a chart to replace the GE stacked bar chart. Stay tuned.
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November 5th, 2007 at 7:49 am
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