Create Compelling SmartArt Diagrams and Charts in Microsoft Word 2010

Introducing Word 2010 Chart Types

Charts are often used to illustrate relationships—how one item relates to another, how an item this year relates to the same item last year, how a product is selling over time. Eleven different chart types are available:

• Column A column chart is used to show data comparisons. You might show, for example, how two data series “stack up” against each other for the first quarter.

• Line A line chart plots data points over time or by category. You might use a line chart to show a trend in product returns over a six-month period.

• Pie A pie chart shows the relationship of different data items to the whole. Each pie comprises 100 percent of the series being graphed, and each slice is shown as a percentage of the pie. You might use a pie chart to show the relative size of individual departments in the northeastern sales division of your company.

• Bar Word shows a bar chart as horizontal bars, graphing data items over time (or other categories). You might use a bar chart to compare the stages of different products in a production cycle.

• Area An area chart gives you the means to compare data two different ways: you can show the accumulated result of the data items, and you can show how the data (and their relationship to one another) change over time. For example, you might use an area chart to show how many students took each module of the exam at two different universities.

• XY (Scatter) With an XY chart, you can plot pairs of data points over time. You might use an XY chart to contrast the test scores from a battery of exams given at two different universities.

• Stock A stock chart displays four values for a single item—open, high, low, close—and is designed to show the variance in a particular item within a specific period of time.

• Surface A surface chart is a great way to compare the change of three data items over time. Through the use of colored levels, a surface chart shows in three-dimension form where the data in a particular series leads (see Figure 16-6).

• Doughnut A doughnut chart is similar to a pie chart in that it shows the relationship between data items. Doughnut charts enable you to compare two sets of data and the way in which they relate to the whole and to each other. You might use a doughnut chart to portray two different sales campaigns. The sections of the doughnut could represent the different sales channels, and you could compare and contrast the different effects of each channel.

• Bubble With a bubble chart, you can plot three different data series. Each item is plotted at a particular point in time and shows the data value as a bubble. You can see, for example, which accounts had the highest charges during the second quarter.

• Radar A radar chart plots multiple data points and shows their relation to a center point. You might use a radar chart to show how each regional sales division fared in a recent sales competition.

  

  Figure 16-6 With a surface chart, you can illustrate series data in three dimensions.