How to Choose the Correct Chart Type
It is important to ask these 5 questions:
- What story is your data trying to deliver?
- Who will you present your results to?
- How big is your data?
- What is your data type?
- How do the different elements of your data relate to each other?
What is my data trying to deliver?
In these data visualisations, I am trying to give an insight into a week of my life. I want each dashboard to be linked by theme to try and tell a story.
Who am I presenting my data to?
There is no specific target audience.
The type of graph you use depends on the type of data you want to represent:
Examples:
- Discrete data is best represented using bar charts.
- Temperature graphs would usually be line graphs because the data is continuous.
- When you are graphing percentages of a distribution a pie chart would be suitable.
- When you have two variables, such as marks in a Maths test and marks in a Science test, then a scatter diagram would be the one to use.
My Data