Practical Tableau

Chapter 73. Three Ways to Make Beautiful Bar Charts in Tableau

When it comes to data visualization, bar charts are still king. With all due respect to my other favorite fundamental chart types such as line graphs and scatter plots, nothing has the flexibility, ease of use, and ease of understanding, as the classic bar chart. Used to compare values of categorical data, bar charts work well because they take advantage of a basic preattentive attribute: length. Our ability to process the length of bars with extreme efficiency and accuracy makes the bar chart arguably the most powerful data visualization choice available to us.

The invention of the bar chart is credited to William Playfair, with his Exports and Imports of Scotland to and from different parts for one Year from Christmas 1780 to Christmas 1781 being the first appearance. Extraordinarily long and descriptive titles aside, bar charts have been making an impact for a long time. In fact, I hypothesize that the fact bar charts have been around for so long is one of the reasons some attempt to find a “more engaging” chart type to tell their data story.

This chapter attempts to add some love for bar charts by sharing three ways to make them more engaging in Tableau.

Approach #1: Use Formatting Available in Tableau

My first tip for making beautiful bar charts is to use the formatting options you already have available in Tableau. Consider the following Sales by Category bar chart that shows all of the default Tableau settings: ...