You can use a column chart to plot data that has been arranged in rows or columns. These types of charts help to illustrate the comparisons among items or show how data has changed over a given period. Categories are normally organized along the horizontal axis while values are organized along the vertical axis. The chart subtypes found in column charts include clustered column, stacked column, 3-D column as well as cylinder, cone and pyramid.
You can use line charts to display continuous data over a given time, which is set against a common scale. One of the uses of line charts is showing data trends at equal intervals. The horizontal axis is used to distribute category data evenly while the vertical axis is used to show evenly distributed value data. Line charts are ideal when the category labels are in text form and represent evenly spaced values, particularly in case of multiple series.
Pie charts help to show the respective sizes of different items in a given data series in proportion to the sum of all the items. The charts use data points, which are displayed as percentages of the whole pies. You can use a pie chart when none of the values to be plotted are negative, you have only one data series to plot, you want to display a maximum of seven categories and the categories represent parts of the complete pie.
Bar charts help to illustrate the comparisons among individual items. They are useful when the values to show are durations or the axis has long labels. On the other hand, area charts help to emphasize the magnitude of change over a given time. You can use them to draw attention to the total values across trends. Scatter charts display the relationship among different numeric values in several series of data. They are also know as XY charts because they are used to plot two groups of numbers in a series of XY coordinates. You may also use stock charts, surface charts, doughnut charts, bubble charts and radar charts.