An image showing two iterative components for a dashboard.

Bar charts and line charts are both useful for visualizing data, but they serve different purposes:

Line charts are generally better for showing changes and...

When should you use bar charts vs line charts

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/when-should-you-use-bar-charts-66ABdtMUSOyVV3poimwu3A

Bar charts. The line chart looks nice,  but isn’t the right way to visualize values that start at zero every day

These show the complete week with the current day of the week highlighted. 

However, I may have misunderstood your question, if you don’t mind please rephrasing it.

Perplexity gives a good summary: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/when-should-you-use-bar-charts-66ABdtMUSOyVV3poimwu3A

The other thing to keep in mind is the current day will always be a partial day. It may be better to highlight “yesterday” since that’s the last *complete* day

Bar charts. Very easy to at a glance see the comparison

My thought is that line charts are great for showing how a cumulative value changes over time (stock price, heart rate, etc). With traffic, every day starts at zero and each day is a unique measure. So bar charts better communicate what I think you’re trying to get across.

Thanks Matt for the explanation, I totally agree.

The reason I created 2 iterations was because a different component was using bar charts and I was looking to find a way to not be repetitive in showing data but also give at a glance what the data is.

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