Butterfly chart

A butterfly chart (also referred as Tornado chart or Divergent chart) is a type of bar chart used to compare two data sets at a time. This chart plots the data as two horizontal bars with the same X-axis in the center, resembling the butterfly wings.

This will be useful in comparing two data sets contrasting each other such as male vs female, income vs expense, positive vs negative, completed on time vs overdue, etc.,

Creating a Butterfly Chart

Zoho Analytics supports the following types of butterfly charts. 

• Single Series Chart with Color
• Multi Series Chart

Single Series Chart with Color

You can create a butterfly chart for a single metric (Y-axis) grouped by multiple dimensions i.e., by X-axis and Color.  The butterfly chart will compare the metric by two color values. 

Follow the below steps to create a butterfly chart with a single Y and color.

1. Open the chart editor. Drop columns as given below.
   • X-axis - Drop a dimension column 
   • Y-axis - Drop a metric column
   • Color - Drop the column to group by color. The data will be compared based on the color column. 
2. Click the Click here to Generate Graph button. A default chart (line or bar, typically) with color categorization gets created.
3. Change the chart type to Butterfly. Two horizontal bars are plotted based on the Color value to compare the data. 
4. Butterfly chart can compare only two values at a time.  In case you have more than two color values in your data, by default, the first two values will be displayed in the chart. You can choose other values to compare, using the legend in the chart view mode.

The following animation illustrates how to create a butterfly chart comparing male vs female fans count based on age for your Facebook page. 

Multi Series Chart

You can create a butterfly chart comparing multiple metrics (Multi Y-axes) grouped by the same X-axis.

Follow the below steps to create a multi-Y butterfly chart.

1. Open the chart editor. Drop columns as given below.
   • X-axis - Drop a dimension column 
   • Y-axis - Drop multiple metric columns
2. Click the Click here to Generate Graph button. A multi Y chart will be created.
3. Change the chart type to Butterfly. Data from two Y-axis metrics will be displayed as a butterfly chart to compare the data easily. 
4. Butterfly chart can compare two values at a time. In case you have more than two columns in the Y-axis, then you can choose the columns to compare using the legend in the chart view mode. By default, the first two axis values will be displayed in the chart. 

The following animation illustrates how to create a butterfly chart comparing positive and negative reactions for your Facebook posts every day. 

Possible combinations for creating Butterfly Charts

The following combinations of column types are possible when creating butterfly charts.

• Dimension: A column with Actual Value function applied over it. For numeric columns, the Actual value will be divided into Actual Measure, Actual Dimension, and Actual Range, from which you can choose the appropriate function. 
• Aggregate: A column with an aggregate function (sum, average, count, etc) applied over it. This also includes the aggregate formula columns.