Bar chart

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This article is about rectangular bar charts. For charts of market prices, see Open-high-low-close chart.

Not to be confused with histogram.

A bar chart, also known as a bar graph, is a chart with rectangular bars of lengths proportional to that value that they represent. Bar charts are used for comparing two or more values. The bars can be horizontally or vertically oriented. Sometimes a stretched graphic is used instead of a solid bar.

[edit] Example

The example chart is based on the results of the election for the European Parliament in 2004 and in 1999. The following table lists the number of seats allocated to each party group. The results of 1999 have been multiplied by 1.16933, to compensate for the change in number of seats between those years.

Group	Seats (2004)	Seats (1999) scaled
EUL	39	49
PES	200	210
EFA	42	56
EDD	15	19
ELDR	67	60
EPP	276	272
UEN	27	36
Other	66	29

A bar chart visualizing the above results of the 2004 election can look like this:
(If all the values were arranged in descending order this type of bar graph would be called a pareto chart.)