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I think a line graph would be best for showing Flores del Mundo’s membership trends over the course of the year, since line graphs effectively display changes over time. If I was graphing total membership versus employee/spouse/dependent, I would use a bar graph instead of a line graph, because this is a part-to-whole relationship, which measures individual categorical subdivisions as ratios to the whole. I would use a line graph to show Eastern and Northern membership trends over the course of a year on the same graph, because the same time series is being used, and I am specifically still interested in seeing the membership trend for each region and trends are most effectively displayed in line graphs.
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To demonstrate the Flores del Mundo membership trends over the course of the year, I would use a line graph to show the overall trend. The reader would be able to get a clear sense of how the data has changed through time. If the total membership was split into two datasets to look at the Eastern and Northern membership over the course of a year, I would still use a line graph to clearly summarize the membership trend and to allow for easy comparison between the two regions.
To graph the total membership vs. employee/spouse/dependent, I would chose a bar graph. When re-reading ‘The Right Graph’ article, the author shows an example of two sets of categorical data which could be used to easily display the total membership in addition to a bar for each subgroup (employee, spouse, or dependent). I would suggest dividing the time into quarters as the author did to ensure the graph is easy to read with the multiple bars at each timepoint.
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If Flores del Mundo wanted to track membership rates over the course of a year, I would recommend using a line graph. Line graphs easily allow the user to look for trends over time in a visually appealing manner. In addition, if the data were split between Northern and Eastern regions, I would suggest using a line graph with a line for each region. A bar graph could also be used, but it may be visually easier to compare membership rates between regions with the line graph.
If graphing membership based on category (employee/spouse/dependent), a bar graph would be useful. Because the data captures an entire year, it may be helpful to stack the bars rather than place them side-by-side for each month. This method allows the user to examine categorical data as a part of a whole and is more visually appealing.
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If you wanted to show the Flores del Mundo membership trends throughout the year, a line graph by month would be the best way to present that data. If you were to break it down by member type (ie. employee, spouse, or dependent), it would be meaningful to do a bar graph by month that is stacked with each member type in a different color. That way, you can easily see how the membership is trending month to month while also visualizing what types of members are making up that data every month.
To compare Eastern vs Northern Membership data, a line graph would also be useful as they would be on the same graph and you can visually see how they compare very easily. You can also look here for monthly trends.
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The best graph option to display Flores del Mundo’s membership trends over the course of the year is a line graph with a data point for each month of the year (months on x-axis, # of members on the y-axis). A line graph would most clearly allow a reader to see trends over time compared to others displays.
If graphing total membership for the year stratified by member type (employee/spouse/dependent), but are not interested in seeing changes over time, I would use a bar graph, with each bar representing the total number of each member type. The different lengths of bars would make it easy to take away which member type had the most representation versus others during the year displayed. If you were interested in stratifying by member type and change over time, you could display the breakdown of member type for each month or quarter of the year.
If I wanted to display Eastern and Northern membership on the same graph and wanted to see trends over the year, I would create a line graph, similar to the overall membership line graph, but with one line representing Northern membership and another representing Eastern. I would be sure to have each line either be a different color or pattern for people to interpret clearly.
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A line graph would be best for emphasizing the overall pattern of membership trends over the course of the year. A line graph also allows for easy comparison of Eastern and Northern categories.
The best graph for comparing total membership to categorical subdivisions depends on the type of quantitative relationship that you want to highlight. A stacked bar graph could emphasize the part-to-whole relationships, but it becomes too cluttered with four subcategories and 12 time points for each. Reducing this to 4 time values, as others have suggested is a good solution.
If the time series relationships are most important for interpretation, a line graph could be used to emphasize the overall pattern for each subcategory. With this dataset, a clear pattern emerges that also allows for ranking.
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I think that a line graph would be the best option for showing Flores del Mundo’s membership trends over the course of the year. This is a time series relationship, and so creating a line graph with time in months on the x-axis and number of members on the y-axis would enable viewers to easily see the trends in membership over the course of the year. I would also use a line graph to depict the Eastern and Northern regions on the same graph, with a separate line for each region.
As others have noted, the best option for graphing total membership versus employee/spouse/dependent depends on the intervals of time used. If I wanted to show the overall breakdown for the entire year, I would create a bar graph with a categorical x-axis for each member type, and the number of members on the y-axis. This allows for a quick comparison across member types. If I wanted to show the trends in membership over time for each of these categories, I would use a stacked bar graph, but would likely use larger time intervals like quarters instead of months to reduce visual clutter (as others have suggested).
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The best graph to illustrate Flores del Mundo’s membership trends over the course of the year is a line graph. I think I would then switch to a bar/column chart to better illustrate total membership versus employee/spouse/dependent with the use of contrasting colors to depict northern vs eastern memberships. As other have suggested, collapsing the time points to quarterly intervals would be easier to interpret.
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