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Chart Templates: The Six to Start With

Not a category in the strict sense, more a hand-picked shortlist. If you're not sure which chart type fits your data, start here and work outward.

Sobre Featured Charts

This page collects chart templates, and it's worth being upfront about what that means: it's a shortlist we've put together, not a formal category like bar charts or maps elsewhere on this site. Bar chart, line chart, pie chart, choropleth map, scatter plot and treemap: six templates chosen because between them they answer almost every question a reporter, analyst or student runs into when a spreadsheet needs to become a picture.

Each one solves a different problem. A bar chart ranks categories against each other; a line chart tracks a number as it moves through time. Pie charts show how a whole splits into parts, though only when there aren't too many of them, while a choropleth map colors a shape by a value so a country or state can carry its own number. Scatter plots check whether two numeric variables move together, and a treemap packs a hierarchy, categories inside categories, into nested rectangles sized by value. If your data doesn't fit any of these six, it's a sign you need a more specific template, not that these are wrong.

We picked this set because it's a reasonable default, not because it's exhaustive. PlotSet has dozens of chart types built for narrower jobs: dumbbell charts for before-and-after comparisons, population pyramids for age-and-gender demographics, Sankey diagrams for flows. Start here if you're not sure what you need; move to a dedicated chart category once you know.

Tipos de gráfico nesta categoria

Cada um abre seu próprio criador grátis com dados de amostra já carregados.

Melhor usado para

You know your data but not your chart

You've got a spreadsheet and a rough idea of what story it tells, but no fixed idea of the shape. Walking through these six against your data (categories, time series, parts of a whole, geography, correlation, hierarchy) usually narrows it down fast.

A first chart for a report or a class

These are the six types most readers already know how to read, which matters more than novelty when the goal is getting a point across quickly. Nobody has to learn a new visual language to understand a bar chart.

Testing PlotSet before committing to a workflow

If you're evaluating whether PlotSet fits how your team publishes charts, these templates are the fastest way to see the upload-to-embed path end to end without hunting through a full category taxonomy first.

You need one chart, not a system

A single ad-hoc chart for a blog post or a one-off analysis, where you don't need to think about a whole family of related layouts, just the one shape that fits the data in front of you.

Como construir um

De uma planilha a um gráfico publicado, passo a passo.

01

Match your data to one of the six

Ranking categories, a trend over time, parts of a whole, values by location, two variables against each other, or a nested hierarchy: figure out which of these your spreadsheet actually represents before opening a template.

02

Open that chart's page

Each of the six links below goes to its own template page with sample data already loaded, so you can see the expected column layout before uploading anything of your own.

03

Bring in your spreadsheet

Upload a CSV or Excel file, paste rows directly, or connect a Google Sheet so the chart updates automatically when the source data changes.

04

Publish or export

Publish for an interactive embed with hover tooltips and responsive resizing, or export a static PNG, SVG or PDF for a deck, article or report.

Abra o editor e comece com qualquer modelo nesta categoria. Já vem com dados de amostra.

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Featured Charts: perguntas frequentes

Use a bar chart. It's the most accurately read way to compare values across categories: length maps directly to value, and readers don't have to estimate angles or areas the way they do with a pie chart. Sort the bars by size unless there's a natural order like months or age groups, which makes the ranking obvious at a glance.

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