Data visualisations play a fundamental role in answering an important data question:”How does result A compare to result B?”. Typical examples of these questions are:

How does the sales of this month compare to the sales of last month?

What is the difference between the number of documents processed this year compared to last year?

How does the number of planned-visitors compare to the number of unplanned-visitors at our locations?

Key in answering these kind of questions is explicitly visualising the difference between the two results. This is the strength of the Dumbbell Bar Chart: showing the values and the difference between them.

The Dumbbell Bar Chart shows the two values by displaying a marker for each value connected by a line, hence the name Dumbbell Chart. Additionally the user can include the Variance chart. This additional chart shows the difference between the values. This difference can be shown as an absolute amount or percentage.

Key features of the Dumbbell Bar Chart are:

Format the objects: Each of the data point objects (marker and line) can be formatted by selecting a color and size. Additional, the line can be switched on/off and for for the marker one can switch on/off the fill color. You can also select a marker style from a number of shapes, like arrow head, square or line;

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

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

Context menu: Like in standard Power BI Charts you have access to the context menu to 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. You can even use another report page as a tooltip.

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

Data labels: Like any standard visual you also can show data labels in the Dumbbell Bar Chart

Conditional formatting The markers and lines support conditional formatting to change their appearance based on data and rules;

Analytics lines Reference lines can be added to the Dumbbell Bar Chart by configuring them in the Analytics pane;

All functionality of the Dumbbell Bar Chart is available for free to try within Power BI Desktop. A licensed version is available for production usage and sharing the reports with your colleagues in Power BI Service. A license can be purchased on our website. Need more information? Visit our site at: https://visuals.novasilva.com

Dumbbell Bar Chart

by Nova Silva