Take Control of Numbers

Creating Charts

A chart or graph is not only a good way, but often the only way, to reasonably interpret a pile of data; it’s difficult to see trends, and often impossible to make useful comparisons, just by looking at rows and columns of numbers. Numbers provides enough chart choices to both represent most of the data you’ll be wrangling and potentially confuse you as to which type to use. And you could practically suffocate in its giant cloud of chart-building and formatting options, unless you stick with straight-vanilla presentations—and who wants that?

We’ll begin at the beginning—learning chart terminology—and then move on to learning about Choosing the Right Chart for your data. Once you have that under your belt, I’ll describe Creating ...