Member-only story
Clustered & Overlapped Bar Charts
Why & How
1.- Clustered Bar Charts
AKA: grouped, side-by-side, multiset [bar charts, bar graphs, column charts]
Why: Clustered Bar Charts (CBC) display numerical information about the relative proportion that exists between a main category and its subgroups that belongs to a second categorical variable. Similar to Stacked Bar Graphs, they should be used for Comparisons and Proportions but with emphasis on Composition. Unlike Stacked Bar Graphs, the elements that make up the subcategories may be diffusely related. CBC are particularly effective when a whole is divided into multiple parts. They enable to make comparisons across subcategories whilst Stacked Bar Graphs make comparisons within subcategories.
They allow to visualize how subgroups change over time, but the chart becomes difficult to read with the extension in time and with the increase in the number of subcategories. They should not be used for Relationship or Distribution analysis.
How: as usual with bar charts, CBC are two-dimensional with two axes: one axis shows categories, the other axis shows numerical values. The axis where the categories are indicated does not have a scale to highlight that it refers to discrete (mutually exclusive) groups. The axis with numerical values must have a scale with its corresponding…
