When to use a bar chart

A bar chart, also known as a bar graph, is a visual representation of data that uses rectangular bars to represent different categories or groups. The length or height of each bar is proportional to the value it represents.
Bar charts are commonly used to display categorical data:

• A trend of categorical data
• Distribution of categorical data
• A comparison of categorical data

Remark
If you are not familiar with data types, feel free to check out the Continuous Data Type 101 and Categorical Data Type 101.

When a bar chart is used

Trends

The chart below (a bar chart race) displays the world population by country from 1960 to 2018.

Distribution

The demo below visualizes the distribution of the Danish population in 2019:

Comparison

The bars’ length provides an excellent visual for comparison. According to the chart below, in 2018, Austria had the most significant organic farming area shares in Europe at 24.1%, Estonia at 20.6%, and Sweden at 20.6%.

Overall, a bar chart is helpful for presenting and analyzing categorical data clearly and concisely.