Working with Bar Charts

About Bar Charts

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

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 category values 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 these roles:

Group

groups the data based on 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 shown as either 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.

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 title.

Generate graph title

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: The frequency values are based on the data that is shown in the visualization (after filters and other data selections have been applied).

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

Grouping style

specifies how grouped data is 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 Group 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 labels

shows the data values as text in the visualization.

Note: You can always view a data value as a data tip when you position the cursor over a data value.

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.

Reference Lines

adds reference lines to the visualization. To create a reference line, click Create new reference line

, and then specify the parameters for the line in the New Reference Line window.

The name of each reference line appears below the Reference Lines option. You can edit or delete your reference lines by using the icons next to each name.

Sort Data Values

By default, a bar chart is sorted in descending order by the value of the first measure. To change the sorting, right-click on 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.

Note: If the visualization contains a rank, then, by default, the data is sorted based on the values of the rank.