A basic guideline on how to choose the right chart or graph to visualise your data.

1. O P I N I O N
B Y O S O A D I N U G R O H O
C H O O S I N G T H E
R I G H T C H A R T

2. TIME
Time should always run from left to right.
Most people would agree with this common
convention.
5
10
15
JAN FEB MAR
20
0
HORIZONTAL
STRUCTURE
Category items such as countries,
customers, and etc is best to use vertically
oriented charts. Easier to sort by category
labels.
5
10
15
20
AUSINASIN
0
VERTICAL
AUS
IDN
SGP

3. TIME-SERIES
Best for time representation of years,
quarters, months, weeks, and days. See that
trend?
10
20
30
2015 2016 2017
40
50
0
ANALYSIS
STRUCTURE
This would enable us to look up a specific
value, comparing values between each
category, and also show rankings between a
category.
10
20
30
AUSINASIN
40
0
ANALYSIS
Malcolm10
20
30
40
50
2015 2016 2017
0
10
20
30
40
50
2015 2016 2017
0
Jackie
Rudd
Malcolm
Jackie
Rudd

4. SHARE-TO-WHOLE
COMPARISON
Ever wonder how dominant a category share amongst others? Best way is to identify it by using
a pie chart, doughnut chart, or even a waterfall chart. Pie chart can be a little tricky when it
contains more than 3 categories since stacking data labels could be a mess. So, make it simple!
Chart
25%
Pie
75%
Chart
19%
Sweet
26%
Doughnut
56%
AUS
IDN
SGP
JPN
TOTAL

5. VARIANCE/GROWTH
ANALYSIS
Variance charts are always a popular choice when preparing business reports, presentations, or
dashboards. It visualises growth, variances, and changes which in common practice would be a
year on year basis comparison. Adding some colour coding into positive/negative values will
distinguish any differences on visualising results.
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
AUS
IDN
JPN
SGP