chart-selectionlisted

Choose the right chart for a financial question - a decision table from question to form, the comparison-type heuristic, when a table or a single number beats any chart, and the substitutes for forms that mislead. Start here before building any chart. Trigger on "what chart should I use", "how do I show this", "best way to visualize", "pie or bar", "which chart type", "chart for", "visualize this data".
Lukehle/chartroom · ★ 0 · Web & Frontend · score 70

Install: claude install-skill Lukehle/chartroom

# Chart selection Start from the **question**, never from the data shape. "I have a time series" leads to a line chart; "is our burn accelerating?" leads to a much better one. The strongest move in this whole skill: **often the answer is not a chart.** One number with a comparison, or a well-set table, beats a chart for a great many financial questions. --- ## Decide by comparison type Almost every financial question is one of these. Find the row, take the form. | The question is about… | Form | Notes | |---|---|---| | **How we got from A to B** | **Waterfall / bridge** | The most under-used and most valuable financial chart. `bridge-charts` | | Change over time | Line (continuous), column (discrete periods) | Zero baseline for additive measures | | Actual vs a target | Bullet chart, or a variance bar | Plot the *variance*, not two lines to subtract. `variance-charts` | | Ranking | Horizontal bar, sorted by value | Never alphabetical unless lookup is the job | | Part of a whole, **once** | Stacked bar (single), or a table | Not a pie beyond ~3 slices | | Part of a whole, **over time** | Stacked area, or 100% stacked column | Only the bottom band is reliably comparable | | Composition across two dimensions | Marimekko | Width and height both encode. `flow-charts` | | Movement between states | Sankey | Cash flow, customer movement. `flow-charts` | | Retention / decay by group | Cohort heatmap or curves | `cohort-charts` | | Relationship between two measures | Scatter | Ad