Bar charts are one of the most widely used chart types in data visualization. They are especially useful when you want to compare quantities across different categories. In a bar chart, each bar represents a category, and the length or height of the bar corresponds to the value or count for that category. This makes it easy to spot differences, trends, or outliers in your data at a glance.

You will often use bar charts when you need to visualize categorical data, such as sales figures for different products, the number of users in various regions, or survey responses grouped by answer choices. Bar charts help you quickly understand which categories are the largest or smallest, and are ideal for visualizing data where the categories are discrete and not continuous.