See Bar chart templates for Wikipedia templates to make bar charts.

A bar chart is a chart with rectangular bars with lengths proportional to the values 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.

Example

The example European 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.)

ImageSize = width:400 height:240 PlotArea = width:300 height:150 left:50 bottom:40 AlignBars = late

DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:0 till:300 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:50 start:0

BarData=

bar:1 text:"EUL"

bar:2 text:"PES"

bar:3 text:"EFA"

bar:4 text:"EDD"

bar:5 text:"ELDR"

bar:6 text:"EPP"

bar:7 text:"UEN"

bar:8 text:"Other"

Colors =

 id:lightgrey value:gray(0.7)

 id:darkgrey  value:gray(0.1)

TextData =

 pos:(10,220) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:Seats

 pos:(180,25) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:Group

 pos:(90,225) textcolor:black fontsize:M

 text:European Parliament Election 2004

PlotData=

width:18

bar:1 color:lightgrey from:0 till:39

bar:2 color:lightgrey from:0 till:200

bar:3 color:lightgrey from:0 till:42

bar:4 color:lightgrey from:0 till:15

bar:5 color:lightgrey from:0 till:67

bar:6 color:lightgrey from:0 till:276

bar:7 color:lightgrey from:0 till:27

bar:8 color:lightgrey from:0 till:66

This bar chart shows both the results of 2004, and those of 1999:

ImageSize = width:480 height:240 PlotArea = width:360 height:150 left:50 bottom:40 AlignBars = late

DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:0 till:300 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:50 start:0

BarData=

bar:17 text:

bar:2 text:

bar:1 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:4 text:

bar:3 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:6 text:

bar:5 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:8 text:

bar:7 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:10 text:

bar:9 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:12 text:

bar:11 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:14 text:

bar:13 text:

bar:17 text:

bar:16 text:

bar:15 text:

Colors =

 id:lightgrey value:gray(0.7)

 id:darkgrey  value:gray(0.4)

TextData =

tabs:(28-center,74-center,118-center,164-center,211-center,254-center,300-center,347-center)

pos:(10,220) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:Seats

 pos:(200,25) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:Group

 pos:(130,225) textcolor:black fontsize:M

 text:European Parliament Elections

 pos:(233,193) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:2004

 pos:(185,193) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:1999

 pos:(50,40) textcolor:black fontsize:S

 text:^EUL^PES^EFA^EDD^ELDR^EPP^UEN^Other

PlotData=

width:0

bar:1 color:lightgrey from:0 till:39 width:15

bar:2 color:darkgrey from:0 till:49 width:15

bar:3 from:0 till:200 width:15 color:lightgrey

bar:4 color:darkgrey from:0 till:210 width:15

bar:5 from:0 till:42 width:15 color:lightgrey

from:280 till:300 color:darkgrey width:10

bar:6

from:0 till:56 width:10 color:darkgrey width:15

bar:7

from:0 till:15 width:15 color:lightgrey

from:280 till:300 color:lightgrey width:10

bar:8 color:darkgrey from:0 till:19 width:15

bar:9 color:lightgrey from:0 till:67 width:15

bar:10 color:darkgrey from:0 till:60 width:15

bar:11 color:lightgrey from:0 till:276 width:15

bar:12 color:darkgrey from:0 till:272 width:15

bar:13 color:lightgrey from:0 till:27 width:15

bar:14 color:darkgrey from:0 till:36 width:15

bar:15 color:lightgrey from:0 till:66 width:15

bar:16 color:darkgrey from:0 till:29 width:15

See also

• Gantt chart
• Pie chart
• List of information graphics software#Plotting programs (graphing programs)
• Commons:Chart and graph resources
• - many free bar chart examples organized by type.

References

External links

• Bar Graphs, Statistics: Power from Data!, Statistics Canada
• EIA Guidelines for Statistical Graphs
• How to Construct Bad Charts and Graphs
• Animated Bar Chart using Open Source Chart Library
• Directory of graph software and online tools (many can handle bar charts)
• Create A Graph Free online graph creation tool at the website for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences). Bar charts, line charts, area charts, pie charts, and XY graphs. Choice of PDF, PNG, JPG, EMF, EPS, and SVG output.
• BARCHART Tool Free online bar chart generator. Also; line charts and pie charts. The tool is based on the free software JFreeChart.