Unit 1: Presenting Data with Charts
We often use charts to organize our data and help our audience visualize information and grasp concepts more quickly. The best type of chart to use depends on the information you are presenting. For example, you might use a pie chart to compare sales totals from five or six branch offices of a company. However, a pie chart is not as useful for looking at sales trends over five years; a line or scatter plot would be more appropriate for visualizing trends over time.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 2 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- construct a line, column/bar, pie, and stacked column/bar chart;
- choose the appropriate type of chart for the given data;
- create separate chart sheets for an embedded chart in a worksheet
- apply formatting changes and titles to the X and Y axes of a chart; and
- apply formatting changes to all areas of a chart, including the title, plot, and data series.
1.1: Types of Charts
Spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, have a variety of different chart options. In this section, we explore the types of charts available in these spreadsheet programs and how to create them.
Watch this tutorial on creating column, line, and pie charts in Microsoft Excel. When the author changes the data in the original worksheet, the data automatically changes in the chart. This is one of the great features of making charts in a spreadsheet program: any changes you make to your data will automatically update your chart.
Watch this tutorial on how to make a special type of bar or column chart called the stacked bar (or stacked column) chart. These charts are useful for making comparisons between groups. The author makes a regular bar chart first, and then makes a stacked bar chart to compare data from different groups.
The process for making charts using Google Sheets is quite similar to Microsoft Excel. Watch these four tutorials, which describe how to create each type of chart in Google Sheets.
1.2: Choosing a Chart
Now that we know how to make the most common types of charts, we need to understand when to use them. Line charts are useful for looking at interest rate trends over time: the x-axis represents time, and the y-axis is the quantity of interest. A line chart is also a good choice for reviewing income throughout the year. We use pie graphs to compare groups, such as to compare sales in different branches of the same company. We use column graphs, bar graphs, stacked column graphs, or stacked bar graphs to compare items in different categories, such as different types of survey data.
Read this section, which details each major chart type and reviews how to create them. Review the examples to see when it is appropriate to use each type of chart.
Unit 1 Assessment