3. The Line chart

A line chart looks like this:

The chart is showing the average wage from January 2012 through to January 2015. Because it is laid out as a line chart, you can easily see that there is a small rising trend over time. You can also see that there are peaks in the data. A table of data would be much harder to interpret.

A line chart is excellent for:

• Displaying continuous data such as a time series
• Seeing trends in the data

Note that a good chart or graph should have a title and the axis clearly labeled.