Understand Your Data Better With Interactive Charts

By Author: Emly Gates
Total Articles: 42
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A chart is basically a visual or graphical representation of data, whereby the data is represented with the help of symbols, such as bars in a bar diagram or lines in a line diagram. Charts are used mainly because they can represent different types of data very effectively and large quantities of data can be read easily and quickly.

In a chart, for displaying data, a horizontal axis and a vertical axis are used, which is referred to as the x-axis and y-axis respectively. The axes have scales and are usually numbered with a label beside briefly stating as to what it is representing. If the data contains multiple variables, a legend is used to help in identification, which is basically a list of the different variables with an example of their appearance.

The most common types of charts used to represent data are:

• Bar chart – is where data is depicted by the use of parallel rectangular bars (which can be plotted either horizontally or vertically) with their lengths proportional to the values they represent. Normally the bars do not touch each other and there is visible space between them.

• Histogram ...
... – is a more specific kind of bar graph. Though, essentially, this too represents data with the help of bars, the main difference is that here the visual data forms an uninterrupted range with the bars touching each other.

• Pie Chart – a circular graph which mostly represents percentage values and here the angles are proportional to the quantities they depict.

• Line chart – This is one of the most basic charts which is created by connecting a series of data points with a line.

Charts are usually used to show change of data over time (such as growth of sales in a company), in order to compare and rank data (for example, how many people read which brand of newspaper), to compare parts of a whole (such as, what percent of the income should be spent on buying luxury items) and in order to compare data by geographical location (like, which states grow what kind of vegetables and where the different items can be differentiated by the use of shadings and symbols).

Lately it’s been noticed that users are opting for interactive, user friendly and dynamic data-driven charts in the likes of PHP charts, HTML5Charts and flash charts. These charts are good to look at and let users try out different options. Some of these charts even have the option to be created in 3D.

Author'sw Bio: Emly is a self-published author on Flash, PHP, HTML5Charts and other charts for web applications. In this article she has given us a brief insight into the highlights of uses of charts.