Sometimes there is a range of scenarios where it is hard to convey the information in a table and written format. Under such situations, Bar charts make things easier and more understandable.
What are Stacked Charts & Bar Charts?
Stacked charts are a sort of bar chart which are multiple-series in nature where related values are placed atop one another. This feature allows comparing the contribution of worth to a total, either in absolute or percentage terms, and comparing multiple categories and category totals simultaneously.
Bar Charts are a summary of categorical data and display data using several bars, each representing a particular category. The height of each bar is equal to the sum of the values in the category it represents. It is also possible to color or split each bar into another categorical row in the data, which enables you to see the contribution from different categories to each bar or group of bars in the bar chart.
Types Of Bar Charts
There are mainly two variations of Bar Chats. Depending on the situation charts are used.
- Clustered Bar Charts: This is a default Bar chart where all the categories are displayed against the same value category.
- Stacked Bar Charts: These are the basic typed charts that allow the comparison of one category to another category.
Main Parts of Stacked Bar Charts
- Title: It denotes the information about the chart
- X-axis: It is the individual entry for the category to be presented
- Legend: It is the different category that will contribute to the charts
- Y-axis: It is for the value against each type of category
- Bars: These heights represent the total value of all the legend
Creation of Stacked Bar Charts
Import data from Your Excel to Power BI. To develop this tutorial we have used this dataset.
Home Tab-> Get Data -> Choose Data which you want Example Excel -> Select the file and Open -> Select The sheet and Load
Loading the dataset
Load Bar chart
Under visualization click on the ‘stacked bar chart’ icon.
Selecting the desired chart
The chart will be loaded on the screen and can be resized if required.
Creating a sample Chart to demonstrate the creation of a stacked Bar Chart
To start creating a bar chart click on the fields which is to be used in a bar chart
Drag and drops the fields that are to be placed on the X-axis and Y-axis of the chart respectively
Selecting the columns for which we want to make a visualization
A simple Bar chart has been created
To show the category in different colors use ‘Legend’, drag and drop the category which is to be shown in color
Stacked Bar Chart for the desired columns of the dataset
On hovering on certain visuals Little information is shown
Tooltips to get info on hovering
To add more information on the data field drag and drop the category under ‘ToolTips’
To split the visuals into multiple versions of itself drag the category under ‘Small Multiples’
The disadvantage of using a stacked bar chart
- Error in estimations can cause false interpretations.
- Bar charts are difficult to read.
- It may confuse if the stack has 4-5 layers.
- They are also difficult to read when there are too many bars.