The Pareto Plot platform produces charts to display the relative frequency or severity of problems in a quality-related process or operation. The Pareto plot is displayed initially as a bar chart that shows the classification of problems arranged in decreasing order. The column whose values are the cause of a problem is assigned the Y role and is called the process variable.

You can also generate a comparative Pareto plot, which combines two or more Pareto plots for the same process variable. The single display shows plots for each value in a column assigned the X role, or combination of levels from two X variables. Columns assigned the X role are called classification variables.

The Pareto plot can chart a single Y (process) variable with no X classification variables, with a single X, or with two X variables. The Pareto function does not distinguish between numeric and character variables or between modeling types. You can switch between a bar chart and a pie chart. All values are treated as discrete, and bars or wedges represent either counts or percentages.