by PT 8.62
Randall Groncki
Bar Charts
Bar Charts compare data or show changes over time.
Insights provide both Horizontal and Vertical bar charts. Additionally, the bar chart can easily be re-configured to show either Horizontal or Vertical bar charts, or even Line and Area charts.
Create a Bar Chart
On the Insights home page, click on the Visualizations menu and click the Create Visualization button at the top of the page.
Choose Vertical Bar from the bottom of the list.
Choose your Index Pattern to supply the data. I am using the Training Data for our Demonstration.
The Vertical Bar Chart visualization appears on the page. All documents are represented in the one bar.
The left window shows the current state of your bar chart. The right window contains the configuration controls.
Filter the Entire Chart
Many times, we want our visualization to work with a subset of the whole data to show a specific business idea. In our case, we only want to see the classes of current, active employees in our Bar Chart.
| Field | Payroll Status |
| Operator | Is |
| Value | Active |
Click on the Add Filter link at the top of the page
Click Save.
Now only the data for the current active employees is in our dataset. We removed 18 documents from our dataset.
Configuration Panel
Data Tab – Metrics Box
The Metrics Box on the Data tab controls the Y-Axis.
Is this a sum or a count? If sum, what field is summed for the chart?
We also can define a custom label
Data Tab – Buckets Box
Buckets are variables or memory locations. The number of buckets directly correlates to the number of bars you want on your chart.
For our primary data series, I want to show the most popular course the employees are taking.
In our dataset, there are 30 unique courses. If we wanted to show all 30 courses on the chart at the same time, I would choose a bucket size of at least 30. In my opinion, all 30 bars showing at the same time is messy. I want to show only the top 5 courses. So, I will choose a bucket size of 5.
Create First Data Series
Click the “+ Add” link in the Buckets box
| Type | Choose “X-Axis” for our first data series |
| Aggregation | Terms. This means we are going to use a field from the Index Pattern |
| Field | Course Title |
| Order | Descending |
| Bucket Size | 5 |
| Custom Label | Set to “Courses” |
Click Update
Our chart shows five Bars
Show the “Other” Bar
For clarity, Insights allows us to group all the remaining documents into an additional bar labeled “Other”. This not only provides a truer perspective of the data but also provides a convenient filter to drill down into the smaller buckets.
Click the “Group other values in separate bucket” checkbox and update.
Create Second Data Series
I want to show the breakdown by company in each of these Courses. In other words, which companies are taking these classes?
I.E, a “Stacked Bar”
Click the “+ Add” link below the X-Axis bucket group.
| Type | Choose “Split Series” for our first data series |
| Aggregation | Terms |
| Field | Company |
| Order | Descending |
| Bucket Size | 5 |
| Group other values in separate bucket | Select |
| Custom Label | Set to “Company” |
Click Update
Within each course bar, we see the breakdown by company.
Metrics and Axis Tab – Metrics Box
Chart Type
Types of charts available:
- Bar
- Line
- Area
Mode
Stacked – Subsequent split series appear within the X-Axis Bar.
Normal – Bars for primary series appear next to each other
Metrics and Axis Tab – Y-Axis Box
- Position: Where to display the Y-Axis. Default is left
- Show Labels – turn on or off the Y-Axis Labels
Metrics and Axis Tab – X-Axis Box
- Show Labels: Turn on or off the X-Axis Labels
- Align: Orient labels on the chart
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Angled
- Truncate: Limit Label character length
- Position:
- Change chart from a Vertical to Horizontal Bar Chart
- Move Axes to opposite side of chart
Panel Settings – Settings Box
- Legend Position:
- Where do we want the legend to appear?
- Right, Left, Top, Bottom
- Turn legends on/off by legend control in bottom left of visualization
- Show Tooltip
- Controls if black popup box appears when user hovers over a bar
- Order Buckets by Sum
- Includes the “Other” bucket in the bar ordering
- Show Values on Chart
- Places the values on the chart if insights finds room
Panel Settings – Threshold Box
- Show Threshold Line: Turns threshold line on or off
- Threshold Value: Values on chart
- Line Style
- Full
- Dashed
- Dot-Dashed
- Line Color
- Set custom color for the threshold line
More Information from other sources
| PeopleBooks | Search Technology: Creating a Visualization for Application Data |
| OpenSearch.Org | Building Data Visualizations – Bar Charts |
