Wikipedia:Graphs and charts

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcut WP:GRAPHSWP:GRAPHS

A graph or chart is a diagrammatical illustration of a set of data. If the graph is uploaded as an image file, it can be placed within articles just like any other image. This how-to guide describes how to create graphs using Wikipedia templates and extensions. For information on graph design and external software, see Wikipedia:How to create graphs for Wikipedia articles.

Graphs must be accurate and convey information efficiently. They should be viewable at different computer screen resolutions. Ideally, graphs will also be aesthetically pleasing.

Graphs should accurately represent the context of the data. Graphs that show a data trend should illustrate the trend accurately in its context, rather than illustrating the trend in an exaggerated or sensationalized way.

Always choose the type of graph that most clearly communicates your data. Avoid using complex or decorative charts that make the information harder to interpret:

• Pie chart – preferable when showing how a whole is divided into parts. Best used with a limited number of categories (ideally fewer than six) to keep it easy to read. For example, how money is allocated in an annual budget.
• Bar graph – preferable when comparing quantities across different categories. Works well for both small and large numbers of categories. For example, comparing population sizes of different countries.
• Line chart – preferable when showing trends or changes over time. For example, tracking website traffic by month.
• Histogram – preferable for showing the distribution of numerical data across intervals. For example, ages of survey participants grouped into five-year ranges.
• Scatter plot – preferable when showing the relationship or correlation between two variables. For example, plotting height against weight of individuals.
• Cartesian coordinates

A variety of templates and styles are available to create timelines.

• The {{Graphical timeline}} template allows representations of extensive timelines. The template offers complex formatting and labeling options to control the output. Typically, each use is made into its own template, and the template is then transcluded into the article. See a geological timeline template example, and an example of it being used in an article.
• The use of fixed images, such as File:Narnia Timeline.svg, was common in the past. However, these are difficult or impossible to adjust later, so this approach is frequently not the best option.

{{Composition bar}} can be used to provide a single statistic. This example shows 70% (70 out of 100), but the template is flexible and can show any positive integer out of any (equal or larger) integer. The template is 100 pixels wide, so the results are rounded to 1%.

To use this, copy the above and replace the values ("70" and "100" in the middle line) with your data. The color can also be changed. If you want to present multiple statistics, you can stack multiple copies of the template inside the first cell of the table.

{{Pie chart}} is an graph-drawing template that produces a pie chart in the article. When making a pie chart, ensure that the segments are ordered by size (largest to smallest). Setting the other parameter to yes will pad the chart so that the values total to 100.

This example was created by typing the following code:

{{Pie chart
|other = yes
|value1 = 40
|label1 = One
|value2 = 32
|label2 = Two
|value3 = 12
|label3 = Three
|value4 = 9
|label4 = Four}}

{{Bar chart}} is a template that displays the data as a horizontal bar chart. The width of the graph can be changed.

{{Bar box}} is a template that displays the data as a horizontal bar chart. The width of the chart can be changed, but care must be taken to make sure the bars stay within the box on many browsers.

{{Stacked bar}} is a template that displays data as a single bar of a stacked bar chart. The template supports up to 12 segments in their proportional lengths compared to a total, along with captions for each section. Care must be taken that the captions do not overlap excessively in smaller resolutions, and in many cases you may not be able to include captions if the segment(s) is too small.

Number of video game articles in the 1970s and earlier by year

Module:Chart is a Lua module that may be used to create several different types of vertical bar graphs.

A standard vertical bar graph

A stacked vertical bar graph

{{Brick chart}} is a simple block-oriented chart template. It's also called a waffle chart and is used as an alternative to the pie chart when you want users to be able to precisely compare the size of different categories.

It assumes that everything must add up to total=100 (or specify), and fills in any missing amounts with "other". You can label (and optionally choose colors for) each item, and the labels can be wikilinks to relevant articles. Decimal amounts are supported (tiny amounts will appear as slivers).

You can make graphs using the Chart extension. This alternative works by storing the data on Commons in a json file (known as Tabular data), and storing the plot visualization in another Commons page with json code.

An example of such a data page is Commons:Data:Autobahn network length.tab, whereas Commons:Data:Autobahn network length.Line.chart contains the information about the plot. You can edit these pages manually, or by using Tabular Import/Export which allows you to upload and download Excel and CSV files.

Before 2023, Wikipedia used a graph-making tool called Vega, but this is now disabled due to security problems and is no longer supported. The old {{Graph:Chart}} implementation has been disabled.

You can add the graph on Wikipedia with the following code:

{{Chart
| chart = Autobahn network length.Line.chart
}}

The procedure is the same as above, but now the data is shown as an area chart:

{{Chart
| chart = Example.Area.chart
| caption = Some words to place under the graph
}}

The default colors are created by Module:ChartColors. The basic 20 are:

If a chart plots 10 colors or fewer, then by default it uses every other one:

The colors can be manually set in a graph by adding them to the 'colors' parameter. For example, for two pie charts, the first of which is default and the second of which omits some colors in the first, you would manually enter your selections from the default 20:

colors=#1f77b4,#aec7e8,#ff7f0e,#ffbb78,#2ca02c,#98df8a,#d62728,#ff9896,#9467bd,#c5b0d5,#8c564b,#c49c94,#e377c2,#f7b6d2,#7f7f7f,#c7c7c7,#bcbd22,#dbdb8d,#17becf,#9edae5

Similarly if one chart plotted fewer than 10 colors and you wanted it to use the same colors as another that had more than 10.

See also Template:ChartColors.

Using {{owidslider}} one can take group of svgs uploaded to Commons from Our World in Data and visualize them within Wikipedia in an interactive manner. See Cancer#Prognosis as an example. This allows use to replace some of the functionality previously provided by Extension:Graph.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is the recommended format.

• Module:Chart creates bar and pie charts on Wikipedia without need for external tools
• Many spreadsheet, drawing, and desktop publishing programs allow you to create graphs and export them as images.
• gnuplot can produce a wide variety of charts and graphs; see samples with source code at Commons.
• In Python using matplotlib (examples)
• The R programming language can be used for creating Wikipedia graphs.
• The Google Chart API allows a variety of graphs to be created.
• Livegap Charts creates line, bar, spider, polar-area and pie charts, and can export them as images without needing to download any tools.
• Veusz is a free scientific graphing tool that can produce 2D and 3D plots. Users can use it as a module in Python.
• GeoGebra is open-source graphing calculator and is freely available for non-commercial users.
• WebPlotDigitizer, PlotDigitizer's online free app or SplineCloud's plot digitizer can be used to extract data from charts.

• Wikipedia:How to create charts for Wikipedia articles
• Help:Barchart
• Help:Family trees
• Wikipedia:Collaboration to convert graphs to SVG
• Wikipedia:To scale charts
• Wikipedia:Images
• Wikipedia:Record charts
• Commons:Chart and graph resources
• Choose the color
• BrewerColorLegends
• mw:Extension:Graph/Interactive Graph Tutorial
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Data Visualization