Some more charts
Let's not pretend that we have covered all the chart types that are out there. There are many creative story tellers out there who figure out better ways to present data to highlight insights. However, it is going to stretch our cause a bit too far if we got into every chart type out there.
We will briefly cover a few more chart types here before moving onto something exciting!
Donut Charts
Donut charts are quite similar to Pie charts. Here's a couple of reasons you would use them over pie charts.
1. When you don't want to see a part of the pie dominate in size. Say a part is over 40% of the pie, it can really take over the rest of the parts of the pie and doesn't help the reader as much. A donut chart moderates this domination so the visualization is a bit easy on the eye.
2. When the total value matters. You could show the total right in the middle of the donut, thereby giving a better context to the reader.
Line Charts
Line charts are the best choice when you want to compare multiple sets of data over a period of time.
However, if they are parts of a whole and there is a significance to showing the whole line charts may not be the best option.
Area Charts
Area charts are quite similar to Line charts. They are a better choice when the data sets shown are parts of a whole and show a trend over a timeline.
Again, they are a bad choice to show the comparison in just one time frame.
Tree map
Tree maps come in handy when you have a data set that has fragments and sub fragments. It provides a great visualization to quickly gauge the contributions at different levels in a single view.
Again, not a great option if data is not fragmented.
Tree map is also not ideal to compare data over a timeline.
Bridge / Waterfall
Here's a creative chart to highlight contributions - both positive and negative - by pieces of data on a value of importance. You see the starting and ending values and how they came to be.
Not useful if you don't have the fragments that contributed to change.
