From the course: Picking the Right Chart for Your Data

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Comparisons: Bars and columns

Comparisons: Bars and columns - Microsoft Excel Tutorial

From the course: Picking the Right Chart for Your Data

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Comparisons: Bars and columns

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- [Instructor] I would guess that the most frequent purpose for any data visualization is to make comparisons between different categories of data. Humans love to measure the magnitudes of things and then compare them. You could say this is the result of thousands of years of experience that rewarded such behavior. For instance, we learned how to measure how much rain falls in an area so we can figure out the best place to locate a farm. Sometimes, the emphasis is on the ranking the locations seeing which is best, and which is worst. Other times, it's about more than the rank, and more about the specific values themselves. What the actual rainfall is for each location. Not just which one did the best. There are many, many ways to visualize this type of data. For a ranking, just listing them as you see here, can do the trick. You don't really need a chart to visualize rank. Although, a bump chart is a common chart type to show…

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