Visuals for Presenting Data - Bar & Pie Charts
Communicating visually is a powerful way to increase understanding and improve overall productivity.
But what type of visual is the best for what you are trying to communicate? There are literally hundreds of different types to choose from! This eCourse attempts to answer that question by describing a selection of the most informative visuals and how to use them.
This lesson describes three types of visuals that immediately communicate facts, or data.
Bar & Pie Charts
Data-driven charts (primarily bar and pie charts) allow the audience to perceive your message at a glance rather than puzzling over a list or table of data. It’s easier and more persuasive for the audience to see trends and comparisons on a chart than to calculate them from the raw data. With your chart as support, you can then speak to your conclusions, insights and recommendations—your message.
How to Choose the Right Chart
As with any presentation or document, you must first understand the message you wish to convey. After that, you can choose the right data set and chart. Finally, you must make your chart both visually compelling and quickly digestible by your audience.
In general, one of the biggest mistakes in creating graphics for a presentation or document is using the wrong visual for your message. This is especially true when presenting data—the wrong chart only serves to confuse the audience or reader.
From Message to Data to Chart
If your message is about a share or distribution of a total, a pie chart or relative value chart is appropriate:
If you are comparing shares from different categories, then a stacked bar chart works better than multiple pie charts.
If your message is about a comparison of values, the bar chart is the most appropriate chart.
If your message is about a trend over time, the line chart not only shows the values, but also gives a visual feel for the rates of change. To show values from discrete time frames, such as sales total per quarter, a vertical bar chart may work better than a line.
Charts created for frequency distributions and correlations will use line and vertical bar charts.
How to Create Charts with SmartDaw
SmartDraw makes it incredibly easy to create charts—in fact, it creates them for you!
If you can copy and paste you can create a great looking chart in SmartDraw.
The video covers how to create a chart with information from an Excel file.
Here's a brief overview of the steps involved:
Step 1
Open your Excel or Access file and select the data you want to chart.
Step 2
Open SmartDraw and select "Blank Chart" from the SmartTemplate list.
Step 3
On the SmartPanel, click "Paste Data from Clipboard." SmartDraw creates a great-looking chart automatically!
Step 4
Easily customize you chart by selecting different SmartPanel commands. Change colors, add and remove components, and even add images.
