Visualizing categorical information and trends together in combination charts

The Combination Chart visualization combines bar and line charts in one plot, allowing you to visualize categorical information and trends alongside one another. It might be viable to plot multiple lines or multiple bars, side-by-side, and that is indeed possible to do with a combination chart, but the contrast in visualization type can often provide a more striking comparison.

The Pareto chart, named after Vilfredo Pareto, and used extensively in Lean Six Sigma, is a classic example of a combination chart, where individual values are represented in descending order by bars, and the cumulative total is represented by a line. Let's construct a Pareto chart using the data file ParetoData.xlsx, which you can download from http://www.insidespotfire.com.

We are going to use some fictitious results for a survey asking why a website would drop down on search engine rankings. The results consist of nine, ranked reasons...