Graphs, charts and the first chart

'A picture is worth more than thousand words.' A page of sales figures is slow to read; the same figures as a chart show at once which product sold best and which quarter was weak. That is why accounting data is so often shown as charts.

Two words first. A graph is a diagram that shows the relationship between two variables, so it has at least two dimensions, plotted on the X-axis (horizontal) and the Y-axis (vertical). It can have one line or several, told apart by line styles and colours. A chart is the graphical representation of data in a worksheet.

Different charts do different jobs:

• Column chart: changes over a period of time, and comparisons, such as sales year by year.
• Bar chart (or bar diagram): comparing two or more items.
• Line chart: trends over time.
• Pie chart: the sub-groups of one variable, as shares of the whole.
• Doughnut chart: like a pie with a hole in the middle.

Making a chart takes two basic steps:

• Enter the data, with titles. The book uses ABC Manufacturing Company Ltd.: quarterly sales of six products, with row and column totals.
• Select the data and choose a chart type from the Insert tab, Charts group, for example a bar chart of each product's total, or a chart of the quarterly totals: 25,844; 11,295; 14,744; 21,886, which make 73,769 for the year.