Welcome to the Investors Trading Academy talking glossary of financial terms and events.
Our word of the day is “Bar Graph”
A bar graph is a way to visually represent qualitative data. Qualitative or categorical data occurs when the information concerns a trait or attribute and is not numerical. This kind of graph emphasizes the relative sizes of each of the categories being measured by using vertical or horizontal bars. Each trait corresponds to a different bar. The arrangement of the bars is by frequency. By looking at all of the bars, it is easy to tell at a glance which categories in a set of data dominate the others.
The larger a category, the bigger that its bar will be.
To construct a bar graph we must first list all the categories. Along with this we denote how many members of the data set are in each of the categories. Arrange the categories in order of frequency. We do this because the category with the highest frequency will end up being represented by the largest bar, and the category with the lowest frequency will be represented by the smallest bar.
For a bar graph with vertical bars, draw a vertical line with a numbered scale. The numbers on the scale will correspond to the height of the bars.
By Barry Norman, Investors Trading Academy – ITA
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