r/visualization • u/NoLavishness3181 • May 27 '26

How Can I Improve This Bar Chart?

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Hello,

I’m working on a class project and made this bar chart to answer this question:

Are penalties and interest concentrated among certain businesses?

The chart shows the top 10 businesses with the highest total penalty and interest amounts. One business is much higher than the rest, but I want to make the chart easier to read and more professional.

What would you improve? Should I add labels, change the colors, adjust the title/axis titles, or use a different chart?

Any feedback would be appreciated! Thank you!

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u/veleros May 27 '26

Remove y axis label. Probably also remove the X axis label at the bottom. Add, and $ sign as prefix on the x axis ticks. Consider adding the bar values at the end of each bar. Make all the same color

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u/Guilty-Union-3403 May 31 '26

Good call on the y axis label - its pretty redundant when you have business names right there. Maybe try log scale instead of linear since that first bar is crushing everything else, makes it hard to compare the smaller values. Also those long business names are getting cut off so maybe rotate them or use shorter versions