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Bar Chart

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Bar chart is a type of quantitative graph. It consists of a series of vertical or horizontal bars of identical width but with lengths relative to the represented quantities.

Bar charts are used to compare the categories of a categorical qualitative variable or to compare sets of data from different years or different places for a particular variable.

HISTORY

See graphic representation.

MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS

A vertical axis and a horizontal axis must be defined in order to construct a vertical bar chart.

The horizontal axis is divided up into different categories; the vertical axis shows the value of each category.

To construct a horizontal bar chart, the axes are simply inverted. The bars must all be of the same width since only their lengths are compared.

Shading, hatching or color can be used to make it easier to understand the the graphic.

DOMAINS AND LIMITATIONS

A bar chart can also be used to represent negative category values. To be able to do this, the scaleof the axis showing...

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag

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(2008). Bar Chart. In: The Concise Encyclopedia of Statistics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32833-1_19

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