Bar chart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Example of a bar chart average income per Economic sector

A bar chart or bar graph is a chart with rectangular bars with lengths proportional to the values that they represent. Bar charts are used for comparing two or more values. The bars can be horizontally or vertically oriented. Sometimes a stretched graphic is used instead of a solid bar.

[edit] Example

The following table lists the number of seats allocated to each party group in European elections in 1999 and 2004. The results of 1999 have been multiplied by 1.16933, to compensate for the change in number of seats between those years.

Group	Seats (2004)	Seats (1999) scaled
EUL	39	49
PES	200	210
EFA	42	56
EDD	15	19
ELDR	67	60
EPP	276	272
UEN	27	36
Other	66	29

A bar chart visualizing the above results of the 2004 election can look like this:
(If all the values were arranged in descending order this type of bar graph would be called a pareto chart.)