Find solution
Where is the tool bar?

What chart tool allows a progressive bar chart where the width of each bar represents a value on a scale?

  • Some professional reports (e.g. McKinsey) show graphs where the Y axis is represented by the height of a bar and the X axis is continuous and bars are stacked side by side and their width represents a value. What charting tool allows for such unorthodox graph?

  • Answer:

    Side-by-side bars of variable-width is fairly easy to do in R, using ggplot. I recently adapted http://www.r-bloggers.com/simple-marimekkomosaic-plots/ [1]. your case is far simpler: you only need variable-width, not stacked heights scaled for area. And you're not colorizing by a third variable either. And here you just order the rectangles by increasing height (Avg cost savings). More than half the work here is going to be in that label placement and arrow drawing. [1] By comparison, the marimekko is more complicated, and only 1 page of code.

Stephen McInerney at Quora Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

It looks like there is a "hack" to do this in Excel: http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/variable-width-column-charts/. At the end of this blog post he describes an Excel Add-In that would do this automatically; I haven't tried it myself.

Heather Deacon

I haven't seen a single one, likely because this is so close to the more often used treemap.

James Lytle

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.