I am in total confusion as to what type of graph to provide the user with for my dashboard. My dashboard deals with user statistic like No. of visits, total points they have earned, etc. But I don't know how to represent the same with graphs and of what kind.
Does each type of graph like bar, pie, area, etc have any significance with respect to data? or is it just a different way to put same data?
In other words, are type of graph and data interrelated?
Answer
Each type of graph or chart has a presentation purpose. You choose chart type depending on what you want to show and what parts of the data that you want to compare.
It is quite easy to just google "how to choose graph type". I found for example this Graphing Tutorial: How to choose which type of graph to use?
I summarize:
Use . . .
a Line graph ... to track changes over periods of time...
a Pie Chart, or better a Divided Rectangle ... when you are trying to compare parts of a whole.
a Bar Graph ... to compare things between different groups
a Histogram ... to track changes over time, or probability distributions. Note with histograms, the width is significant, as well as the height, unlike a bar graph
I am sure you will find a lot more about how different graph types can be used, by just googling it.
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