The Merged Bar Chart allows you to compare multiple categories in a single chart, as an alternative to the more complex scatterplot.

Comparing categories is a common goal of data visualisations. In some cases comparing categories on a single measure (e.g. weight per shipment) is enough. This can be done with a standard bar or column chart. However, this is often not enough. Let’s assume we need another measure (like height) to make the comparison more insightful. Now we have one category (shipment) and two independent measures (weight and height). Because these measures are expressed in different units (pounds vs. inches) we can’t combine them in a single bar/column chart. This is when the scatterplot becomes useful.

However, many people find scatterplots hard to read. And it is difficult to expand the number of measures beyond 3 or 4. This is why we created the Merged Bar Chart. This chart can show up to 12 independent measures per category in a comprehensible way. It does this by displaying each measure in it’s own bar-column and allows you to sort on any of the columns to investigate any possible relations between the measures.

Key features of the Merge Bar Chart are:

Format the objects: Each of the bar series can be formatted independently, and supports the theme settings;

The Axis formatting options are in line with the options you know from the Power BI Clustered Bar Chart, so no need to learn a new interface;

Selection & Highlighting: Like in standard Power BI Charts you can make use of the Selection & Highlighting functions within the Merged Bar Chart;

Context menu: Like in standard Power BI Charts you have access to the context menu to (amongst others) Drill down and Include/Exclude data points;

Full tooltip support: Besides the default Tooltip behaviour (show the value of the element you hover) you can also add additional fields to the tooltip.

Full Bookmark support: like any of the standard visuals the Merged Bar Chart supports Bookmarks.

Conditional formatting: The Merged Bar Chart also supports conditional formatting for the colors of the datapoints

All functionality of the Merged Bar Chart is available for free within Power BI Desktop. The licensed version is needed for sharing the reports with your colleagues in Power BI Service. Need more information? Visit our site at: https://visuals.novasilva.com

Merged Bar Chart

by Nova Silva