Working with charts

You can create bar, line, area, and pie charts to compare data graphically in FileMaker Pro.

•	Bar charts are good for comparing increases to decreases, highest with lowest, how many, or how often.

•	Line charts are most useful for showing data that changes continuously over time, such as historical financial information.

•	Area charts are often used to compare summary data, such as sales totals or averages over time.

•	Pie charts are good for showing market share and proportion of difference, but are rarely used for statistical analysis when comparisons must be precise.

For example, bar charts give a good overall picture of your data set, but they are difficult to read when there are numerous bars. Bar charts also imply that data values are frozen. If your data continuously changes over time, a line chart might be a better choice. If you want to show the percentage of one data series (a single bar) to the sum of all data series (all the bars), a pie chart works well.

Choose the type of chart to make depending on what you are trying to show with your data.


Use:	To:
or Bar chart	Compare two or more numerical values taken over time or under different conditions. You might use a bar chart (also known as a bar graph) to compare annual sales totals by region. In FileMaker Pro, you can specify the bars of your chart are displayed vertically or horizontally.
Line chart	Show a trend in data over time. Line charts connect a contiguous series of data points with a line. Each data point represents an individual measurement. Line charts are good for showing the rise and fall of data over time. You might use a line chart to compare the monthly sales totals of four regions over the span of a year. Charting the same data series as a bar chart makes it easy to compare totals by region, but if you want to display upward and downward trends or cycles in these trends across all regions, a line chart is better.
Area chart	Compare aggregated data over time. Area charts (also known as area graphs) show quantitative data. Based on the line chart, in an area chart the area between the X-axis and the data series line is filled with color. In charts with multiple lines, the quantity difference between each data series is emphasized using different colors.
Pie chart	Show the relationship of each data series value to the total of all data in the series charted. Pie charts include percentage values for each individual series and are most effective when at least some of the slices represent 25% to 50% of the whole. Because it’s difficult to compare individual sections within a pie chart or to compare data between pie charts, pie charts are commonly used when a general comparison is all that’s required.