Create Area Chart

How To Make Area Charts

Make beautiful data visualizations with our free area chart maker tool. It’s the perfect tool for creating a quick graph right before a meeting.

What Is An Area Chart?

An Area chart is a graph used to show data points on a two-dimensional plane. 
An Area chart uses a combination of x and y axes to display data points. Each point on the chart represents a data item.

How To Make One

If you’re looking to make a Area chart, there are several ways to do so. You can use an online graphing program like Google Sheets or Excel. Or, you can download a free software package called R. Once you have downloaded R, you will need to install it first. Then, open up R and load the library “ggplot2”. Next, you will need to import some data into R.

What Does It Show?

After importing the data, you will need to specify the chart you want to create. In this case, we will create a Area chart, which means that we will plot two variables against each other.

How To Interpret The Data

Once you have specified the type of chart you wish to create, you will need to choose how to display the data. You can either use a bar chart or a line chart. Bar charts are usually easier to read than line charts because they only require one axis. 
Line charts are more difficult to read because they require both an x and y-axis.

Understanding the Suitability of Area Charts for Data Visualization

An area chart is appropriate to visualize the value change over time or across different categories. Here are some scenarios where an area chart is commonly used:

1. Tracking Trends: Area charts effectively display trends over time and are ideal for illustrating the cumulative values or proportions of multiple variables or categories. For example, you can use an area chart to show revenue growth for different product lines over several quarters or years.
2. Showing Distribution: Area charts can represent a whole's distribution over its components. They help display the contribution of individual elements to the overall total. For instance, create an area chart to demonstrate the market share of various companies in a specific industry.
3. Highlighting Patterns and Comparisons: Area charts can be used to compare multiple data series and identify patterns or relationships between them. By stacking the areas, you can observe the changes in proportions between different categories. This is particularly useful when comparing data with a common baseline, such as market shares or demographic data.
4. Visualizing Progression or Accumulation: If you want to visualize the progression or accumulation of data points, an area chart can effectively show the growth or decline over time or across categories. This makes it suitable for depicting cumulative values like population growth, inventory levels, or project milestones.
5. Emphasizing Magnitude: Area charts are useful when emphasizing the magnitude of different data series or categories. By using varying shades or colors within the areas, you can convey the relative sizes or proportions of the represented values.

When deciding to use an area chart, it's essential to consider the nature of your data and the message you want to convey. Remember to provide clear labels, axis scales, and legends to ensure the audience can interpret the chart accurately.