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Interpretation of Data: Column or Bar Chart

This document provides instructions for creating and interpreting column or bar charts. It outlines 6 steps for creating a bar chart: 1) collect the data, 2) draw the x and y axes, 3) label the x-axis, 4) label the y-axis, 5) draw the bars, and 6) interpret the data. Some things to look for when interpreting the data are outliers, gaps, frequency of occurrences, and clusters. Bar charts are useful for comparing categories of data.

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S.m. Chandrashekar
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40 views

Interpretation of Data: Column or Bar Chart

This document provides instructions for creating and interpreting column or bar charts. It outlines 6 steps for creating a bar chart: 1) collect the data, 2) draw the x and y axes, 3) label the x-axis, 4) label the y-axis, 5) draw the bars, and 6) interpret the data. Some things to look for when interpreting the data are outliers, gaps, frequency of occurrences, and clusters. Bar charts are useful for comparing categories of data.

Uploaded by

S.m. Chandrashekar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Interpretation of Data

Appropriate presentation of data in the form of graphs or charts can be a useful analysis tool and if the
data is then effectively interpreted this can facilitate the decision-making process.

COLUMN OR BAR CHART

The term 'column' is used to describe a chart showing vertical blocks and the term 'bar' is used to
describe a chart showing horizontal blocks. This is consistent with the terminology used in Microsoft
Excel. In practice, however, the term 'bar chart' is often used to describe both types of chart, with the
specific terms 'vertical' or 'horizontal' being used to differentiate the two. So if a manager were to ask for
data to be presented in a bar chart with vertical blocks this could require a 'column' chart type to be
prepared in Excel.

These charts are drawn with two axis, with the independent variable being shown on the x-axis and
the dependent variable shown on the y-axis.

Step I

Collect your data. The first thing you have to do is to collect all of your data.
Remember that a bar graph should show a comparison among categories. Eg. Let's say your
goal is to organize data on how many inches of rainfall a city received between the months
of February 2005 and February 2006. You'll need to find out exactly how much rain fell during
each of the months. Once you have this data, you can begin to draw the graph.

Step:2
Draw an x and a y-axis. This will look like a large "L" shape. Bar charts are often drawn when one set
of data is expressed as a set of categories (which can be periods of time), in which case this set will
be the base. The other axis will be values (sales, costs, grades, scores, production amounts, other
quantities, etc) for the base categories, groups or periods.

Step:3

Label the x-axis. . Let's say you're looking at the months between February of 2005 and
February of 2006.
Label the bottom axis. After you've marked down all of the months that you'll be categorizing, you
can give the entire axis a label. In this case, let's label the axis "Months".

Step: 4

Label the y-axis. . Label the point where the axes meet as 0. If you're working with inches of rain,
and your range of rainfall falls from between 10 inches (25.4 cm) and 70 inches (177.8 cm), then it
will make sense to label the vertical axis in increments of ten, starting with 0, then 10, then 20, then
30, and so on.
Step:5

Draw your bars. Extend the base you have marked on the bottom axis to the horizontal
line labeled with the value of that bar. If the value falls between two lines, approximate
where the correct value would lie. Notice that bars are normally separated (not continuous),
as they are comparing the value of different but comparable events, unless this is a
distribution (histogram).
For example, if the rain fell to 30 inches (76.2 cm) in February of 2005, then raise the bar
up to 30 inches (76.2 cm). If it fell 20 inches (50.8 cm) in March of 2005, then draw the
bar accordingly.

Step:6

Interpret the data. Now that you've made your bar graph, you can have a better sense of
the data because you can visualize it.

Now you can take a step back and take a look at the important aspects of this data. Here are some
things to look for:
Outliers. Outliers are the pieces of data that fall outside the range of normal data that you
gathered. In this case, 70 inches (177.8 cm) of rain, which occurred in February of 2006, is an outlier
because the rest of the data is far below this norm, with the next highest amount of rainfall being 40
inches (101.6 cm).
Gaps. Look for gaps between the data. There was a gap, or no rainfall, in the month of July, as
well as in the months between August and February.
Frequency. See if there's an amount that is frequently occurring. In this bar graph, the most
common occurrence is 10 inches (25.4 cm) of rainfall, which happens in April, May, and June.
Clusters. Look for clusters of data. Most of the inches of rainfall occur around the months of
February, March, and April of 2005.

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