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When it comes to bar graphs you might be used to two familiar shapes

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[image of a bar and a line graph] either this or this they have the familiar shape of a staircase and just

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like a staircase they're easy to use okay easy to use for most of us how

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are you failing at using a staircase you just climbed up nevermind so like a

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staircase you can see upward or downward trends in a flash however it turns out [upward and downward trends of a bar chart]

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that there are all sorts of bar graphs that don't follow this familiar staircase

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form they might be different from their more stare like brethren but we can [bar graph images in a living room]

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still use them to learn all sorts of useful information just be sure not to

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use them as a set of blueprints for a staircase unless you like twisting your [man hopping from one bar chart block to another]

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ankle every time you want to go to another floor so let's take a look at

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these three bar graphs that represent five-year projections just by looking at

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this first one we can tell that profits will be going up over the five years [people smiling by an upward trending bar chart]

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because each bar gets taller and taller similarly just by looking at the second

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one we can tell that profits will be going down over the next five years

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since each bar gets shorter and shorter the third one on the other hand doesn't [man with a microphone explaining a up and down bar chart projection]

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really fit into either of these scenarios since different bars sitting next to

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each other are sometimes taller and sometimes shorter so we can't draw a

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nice clean arrow to show a trend does that mean the graphs broken and we need to [confused man in a suit with a downward trending bar chart]

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smack it like an old TV set until it gives us the kind of arrow we're looking

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for nope the lack of a nice clean arrow is actually the information we want the

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fact that there's no clear trend means that this company is having some ups and [men in suits pondering about the company's profits]

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downs it might be nice if profits were just going up but it's not your bar

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graphs fault that sales of your edible bicycles aren't going through the roof

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we can also use these bar graphs to get detailed information take a look at this

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paragraph for the five-year profit projections of Mike's edible bikes if we [bar chart of a five year profit projections]

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compare the bars for year two and your three we see the bar for year three is

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a bit taller maybe this is the year that they introduced strawberry flavored seats

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sure it'd be an instant success until it starts smelling like butts that is we [strawberries on a motorbike seat]

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can use these two bars to calculate just how much profits will change from the

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graph we can see that year 2 profits are 240 thousand dollars while years

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three profits are three hundred fifty thousand dollars then since the year [bar chart showing profit difference from year 2 to year 3]

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three bar is taller than the other two we subtract the year two profits from the

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year three profits which shows a profit

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increase of 110,000 dollars hopefully this will be enough to weather the [a kid stood beside a green bicycle]

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upcoming anchovy flavor tires year spoiler alert they won't be flying off

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the shelves

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