When you’re charting your data, adding grid lines to your graph has many benefits. Although they can be added in after the fact in virtually any software package, inserting them before plotting ensures that they are properly sized and placed.
Here are the advantages of Grid Lines
1. Easier to Read
One of the main reasons for adding grid lines is that they make it easier to read your graph. This benefit may seem trivial, but it’s very important. Imagine figuring out how much rainfall accumulated in Houston this winter with no gridlines. Now imagine how useful that same information could be if you could see the numbers! The lack of clarity would be indecipherable even if you were looking at the chart right next to you.
2. Quicker Comparison Between Data Categories
When you look at a graph without any gridlines, it takes longer to compare different categories on the graph because there are no reference points for comparison. For example, if I’m looking at a chart with only black dots representing the number of customers who walked into a store every single hour, I would have to extrapolate how much more crowded it was on Saturdays or Sundays. With grid lines, it’s becoming clearer what days are busier than others and an anomaly in the data.
3. Easier to Scale
Having grids on your graph can also be helpful when trying to scale units for certain categories of data. For example, height is represented by length on your x-axis, but the area represents weight. You could still use length as a unit of measure because you know that 1 cm = 2 kg (or whatever the equivalency is) This way, you’re able to compare heights with weights which can’t be done without scaling units.
4. Easier to Identify Data Bins
Sometimes it’s helpful to split the data we’re looking at even further into individual categories.
The most straightforward way is to use a gridline with labels on either end that demarcate the intervals our data falls within. For example, if I wanted every person who walked through my store’s doors this week, I would most likely want to analyze their age. Next, we can easily split that data by age using a gridline.
5. Ability to Split Data Into Smaller Categories
When plotting your graph, it’s sometimes difficult to see what the data looks like when you have a lot of categories on one scale. So instead of simply looking at them as ‘x’ and ‘y’ axes, we can split our y-axis into different bins, which helps us read our graph a little bit better. For example, if I want to compare how many men vs. women walked through my store in a given week but don’t know how to communicate all that information without cluttering the chart effectively, this is a great option.
The benefits of adding grid lines are plenty and should be considered when plotting your next graph. Then all you have to do is decide which data category should go where and select a proper color scheme for your graph!