Stack graph

From Business Intelligence

Example of Tufte-inspired stacked graph design. Click for formatting instructions in Excel 2007.

US Exports by type of product (in millions of $) is a good example because it has a time series dataset and is interactive, allowing for drill-down of the data.

This graph showing |title=US government expenses 1962-2004 is similar to a regular stack graph, except that there are many subcategories sorted by color.

Description

This visualization is similar to the line chart, where data points are connected to each other. However, the lines are filled with color and multiple datasets may be "stacked" on top of one another to show how the variables contribute to the total magnitude of the graph. This may be a stacked column or stacked bar chart. Use this to represent several datasets that contribute to a total magnitude over an interval of time.

Data requirements

Multiple data series adding up to a whole.

Considerations

Doesn't convey exact values very well, nor does it allow for easy comparison of the values against one another.
Each dataset must be on the same scale for this to work correctly, ie, a financial chart's dataset should convert all currency into dollars.
If there are many values within categories and subcategories, the stack graph for categories should be used instead.

Related techniques

Line graph