The Bar Graph

A bar graph, also known as a bar chart (could also be called a column graph), is a graph that uses bars on the common x-axis and y-axis chart.  The bars can be verticle or horizontal.   Additionally, mutliple bars can be placed to show comparisons or different values.

The bar graph is perhaps the easiest graph for the audience to understand.

Let's look at a typical bar graph:

In the above graph, the y-axis (verticle line on the left) shows values from 0 to 5, while the x-axis (bottom line) shows four categories.  The blue bars represent the value of each category.

Let's look at another bar graph:

In the above graph, the bars go from left to right.  In a bar graph, the bars can go from top to bottom or right to left, there is no difference, only preferences.  In this bar graph the y-axis shows four neighborhoods, while the x-axis shows the number of residents in thousands.  In thousands means that for example, Hilltop has approximately seven thousand residents.  Seven equals seven thousand.

Let's look at another bar graph:

In the above graph, as you can see, the shapes of the bars are cylinders.  Again, this is just a preference of the presenter.  In this graph, there are three bars for each category.  The three bars represent yes, no or undecided.  In this graph, it shows a comparison of these against each category.