Bar Charts

Bar charts

A bar chart is a visual representation using either horizontal or vertical bars to show comparisons between discrete categories. There are a number of variations of bar charts including stacked, grouped, horizontal, and vertical.

We will work through a simple vertical bar chart that uses a value on the y-axis and a category in the form of a name on the x-axis.

The end result will look like this:

The data

The data for this example will be sourced from an external (purely fictional) CSV file named sales.csv. It consists of a column of names and “sales.” Its contents looks as follows:

salesperson,sales
Bob,33
Robin,12
...

The code

The full code listing for the example we are going to work through is ...