1. Introduction to Visuals

Power BI visualizations are an essential part of building interactive reports and dashboards. They allow you to represent your data in an easy-to-understand format and enable users to draw insights quickly. Visuals in Power BI are built using the data model and can represent various types of information, from simple bar charts to complex heat maps and KPIs.

Power BI includes both standard visuals (like bar and line charts) and custom visuals, which can be created or imported from the marketplace. Choosing the right visual is crucial for effective communication and insight extraction.

2. Types of Power BI Visualizations

Power BI offers a wide range of visualizations, each suited for different types of data and reporting needs:

1. Charts

   • Bar Chart: Used to compare values across categories (horizontal bars).
   • Column Chart: Similar to bar charts, but with vertical bars. Suitable for comparing data across categories over time or other continuous variables.
   • Line Chart: Great for showing trends over time, such as sales growth or stock prices.
   • Pie Chart: Represents proportions of a whole. Best used when showing percentages of a single data series.
   • Combo Chart: Combines a column chart and a line chart. Useful for comparing different measures across categories (e.g., sales and profit).

2. Scatterplots

   • Scatterplot: Used for showing relationships between two numeric variables. Scatterplots help to identify trends, correlations, and outliers in data.

3. Maps

   • Basic Map: Plots data on geographic maps (e.g., country or city).
   • Shape Map: Used to visualize data using custom geographic regions.
   • Choropleth Map: A heat map that uses color shading to represent different values in geographic regions.

4. Tables and Matrices

   • Table: Displays data in tabular form. Useful for detailed data exploration.
   • Matrix: Similar to tables but supports hierarchies and can display values in both rows and columns.

5. Slicers

   • Slicer: A visual filter that lets users filter data on reports or dashboards. Slicers can filter by categories, date ranges, or numeric values.