Area Chart

Area charts are used to simultaneously display visual information in multiple categories. The categories are stacked so that individual as well as cumulative values are shown.

Area charts, like other charts, such as bar and column charts, are most often used for categorical data that are, by definition, not dynamic in nature. For example, if one were interested in illustrating money spent across the first quarter of the year in certain categories, an area chart would be a useful way to do so, as in the following example. First, here are the data:

	Food	Car	Fun	Miscellaneous
January	$165	$56	$56	$54
February	$210	$121	$87	$34
March	$227	$76	$77	$65

These data represent the amount of money spent in four categories, food, car, fun, and miscellaneous, in each of the first three months of the year. The value for each category by month is shown in the area chart below, with each month containing a series of data points.

An area chart is not an easy chart to create manually; Figure 1 was created using Excel.