The Mathematics of Money

Copyright © 2008, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Suppose you are managing a hotel and at checkout you ask your guests to fill out a survey,

where one of the questions asks for their reasons for choosing to stay at your hotel. Each guest

may choose to select one or more choices from a list of possibilities: location, reputation,

happiness with experience on a prior visit, amenities, friend’s recommendation, and price.

While the totals for each of these responses could be thought of as a percent of the over-

all responses, it may not be entirely appropriate to look at them in this way. It may be more

useful to consider each of the categories separately, comparing how often each one is cited,

rather than looking at each as a percent of the total responses.

As with pie charts, we will list the steps needed to create a bar chart in Excel, and then

illustrate with an example.

How to Create a Bar Chart (Or Column Chart) in Excel

1. List the categories in column A of a spreadsheet.


2. List the amounts for each category in column B. The amounts may be amounts or
   percents.


3. Select from menus: Insert Chart Bar (or Column).


4. Click on the chart style of your choice (the default is a basic bar chart).


5. Click on NEXT.


6. Use your mouse to highlight the area of the spreadsheet where your categories and
   amounts are stored.


7. Next to “Series in” select “Columns.”


8. Click on NEXT.


9. If you wish, you can next enter a title or other formatting by using the options on the
   next screen.


10. Click on NEXT and the FINISH.

Example 16.1.2 During the month of September, 347 guests at your hotel indicated

that location was a reason for choosing your hotel, 319 said reputation, 274 said they

were happy with their experience on a prior visit, 218 listed amenities, 192 listed a friend’s

recommendation, and 95 said price. Create bar and column charts to illustrate this.

Following the instructions given above, we fi rst enter the data into a spreadsheet like this:

1

2

3

4

5

A B

Location 347

Reputation 319

Prior Visit 274

Amenities 218

Recommendation 192

6 Price 95

Then, we follow the remaining steps with the following result:

0

Price

Recommendation

Amenities

Prior Visit

Reputation

Location

100 200 300 400

16.1 Charts and Graphs 611