How to Create Pareto Charts

A Pareto chart is a type of bar graph that shows relationships between categories. A Pareto chart can show you the relative importance of a particular group or category. For example, you may want to make a Pareto chart to show how sales figures for certain sales teams relate to each other or to demonstrate how your company's performance compares to similar companies. Pareto charts are typically shown with descending order or significance with the largest bar on the left hand side and the smallest bar on the right.

Things You'll Need

  • Graph paper
  • Ruler
  • Pencil
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Instructions

    • 1

      Figure out what categories you want to use in your chart. For example, if you want to chart sales, categories could be "Team A Sales" and "Team B Sales."

    • 2

      Add up all of the raw data in each category, For example, Team A sales might be $100 + $200 + $500 for a total of $800 and Team B sales might be $400 + $600 + $500 for a total of $1,500.

    • 3

      Add up the raw data totals to get the grand total. In the above example, the grand total is $800 + $1,500 = $2,300.

    • 4

      Order your categories from largest to smallest according to their raw totals. In the above example, the order would be Team B, then Team A.

    • 5

      Figure out the cumulative percent of each category. To figure this out, add each category to all the categories that come before it in rank order, then divide by the grand total, then multiply by 100. For example, the cumulative percent for Team B would be $1,500 / $2,300 * 100 = 65.22 percent while the cumulative percent for Team A would be ($800 + $1,500) / $2,300 * 100 = 100 percent.

    • 6

      Draw the left-hand vertical axis and label it with the comparison unit. In the above example, the comparison unit is "Sales totals." Label the top of the axis with the grand total, which in this example would be $2,300.

    • 7

      Draw the horizontal axis and label it with the categories. In the above example, the categories are "Team B" and "Team A." Make sure that you label in the order suggested in step 4.

    • 8

      Draw the right-hand vertical axis and label it from 0 to 100 percent. The 100 percent should be at the top of the vertical axis, in line with the grand total on the left-hand vertical axis.

    • 9

      Draw the categories as bars. The top of the bar should represent the raw total. For example, the bar for "Team A" should reach $800.

    • 10

      Draw a line graph that represents the cumulative percent for each category from step 5. For example, draw a line from 65.22 percent starting at the right-hand corner of the "Team B" bar, going up to a point that represents 100 percent above the "Team A" bar.

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