Working with Bar Charts

About Bar Charts

A bar chart represents the values of category data by using bars. The height of each bar represents the value.

Specify Properties for a Bar Chart

On the Properties tab, you can specify the following options:

Name

specifies the name of the visualization.

Title

specifies the title that appears above the graph.

Note: The Title option is disabled if you select Generate graph titles.

Generate graph titles

specifies that the graph title is generated automatically based on the data items in the visualization.

Show grid lines

displays grid lines for each tick on the response axis.

Bar direction

specifies whether the bars are vertical or horizontal.

Frequency

specifies whether the frequency is displayed as a count (Count) or as a percentage (Percent).

Note: This option has no effect if a measure is assigned to the visualization.

Grouping style

specifies how grouped data are displayed. If you select Stack, then the values of the grouping variable are displayed as segments of each bar. If you select Cluster, then each value of the grouping variable is displayed as a separate bar.

Note: This option is disabled if no data item is assigned to the grouping role.

Measure layout

specifies whether the measures share a single response axis (Shared axis) or have separate response axes for each measure (Separate axes).

Note: The Measure layout option is disabled if your visualization contains exactly one measure.

Overview

specifies whether the chart overview is enabled.

Show data values

shows the data values as text in the visualization.

Note: You can always view the data values as data tips when you move the cursor over the graph.

Rotate axis labels

displays the category labels at an angle.

Note: The Rotate axis labels option has no effect when you select a horizontal bar orientation.

Data Roles for a Bar Chart

The basic data roles for a bar chart are categories and measures. You can assign one category only, and the values of the category are plotted on the category axis. You can assign many measures, and the measure values are plotted on the response axis. If a bar chart contains no measures, then the frequency of the category values is plotted on the response axis.

In addition to the basic data roles, you can assign additional roles:

Group

groups the data according to the values of the category data item that you assign. Depending on the value that you selected for the Grouping style property, the group values are either shown as individual bars or as segments of each bar.

Note: Grouping is not available if you assign multiple measures to the visualization.

Lattice columns

creates a lattice of charts, with a column for each value of the category data item that you assign.

Lattice rows

creates a lattice of charts, with a row for each value of the category data item that you assign.

Sort Data Values

By default, a bar chart is sorted in descending order by the values of the first measure. To change the sorting, right-click the data item that you want to sort on, and then select Sort

[sort-method]. For a grouped bar chart, the data is sorted by the category values in alphabetical order.