Pyramid chart is perfect if you want to compare a distribution of two categories against each other across a few levels (might be age groups, years, etc.) Let’s get into more detail!
This chart is commonly used to visualize demographics data that is usually represented by two categories - female and male and can be grouped by age, for example. However, it can be perfectly used to compare any other categories too.
In essence, pyramid chart contains of two bar charts that are mirrored. So it is easy to compare categories between each other.
Creating pyramid chart is quite simple. Let’s go through it step by step!
The pyramid chart can be found underneath the ‘Special charts’ section. By drag & dropping it onto canvas, data can be added to the three dataslots ‘Bins’, ‘Legend’ and ‘Measure’.
Let’s build a pyramid chart to compare the profit - of Dr.Pepper and Coca-Cola per year!
Columns with data types ‘hierarchy’ and ‘date time’ are a perfect fit for this slot.
The data added to this slot defines how many levels - or bins - will appear in your pyramid chart. In this example, we use year level as such the amounts from the same year will be aggregated.
Columns with data type ‘hierarchy’ are the most suitable for this slot.
Legend defines two categories you want to compare against each other - tea vs coffee, cats vs dogs, etc. In our example we are comparing companies so we add it to our legend slot.
Columns with data type ‘numeric’ or ‘hierarchy’ work best for this slot.
The measure slot determines the numeric value of a bin. The higher the value, the longer the bar would be. Different aggregations can be set to execute different calculations, e.g. the average.
This is a final step for completing our pyramid chart - adding data to the measure slot.
And voilà, our chart is ready!
You can add two columns to the 'Measure' slot instead of using the 'Legend' slot to compare the aggregated measures per bin.
Underneath the general settings of the chart you can change the color of your bars, internal padding or add some roundness to the corners.
You can also enable gridlines to make your chart easier to read and move the chart legend to the bottom.