Chart type · Comparison
Diverging bars
Bars growing left and right from a zero axis, gainers and losers coloured apart.
How to read it
Zero sits in the middle. Bars run right for gains and left for losses: length is magnitude, side is direction.
Best for
Change figures where the sign is the story.
When not to use it
Everything moved the same way, which reduces the centre axis to decoration.
The common mistake
Mixing percentage change with absolute change on one axis, so a move from a small base outruns a much larger one.
Examples
No diverging bars videos published yet. Browse the rest of the library.
Related chart types
- Ranked barsHorizontal bars sorted by final value.
- PodiumA top-three, medal-style ranking.
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- DonutA share-of-total ring that builds slice by slice, then pulls the key slice out.
- TreemapRectangles sized by share of the total — as a snapshot, a before-and-after morph, a two-level sector map or a zoom into one tile.
- Stacked barsComposition across categories, optionally as 100% stacks.