Use Categorical Variables

You can assign zero, one, or two X variables whose levels are categories on the x-axis. The Chart platform produces a bar (or a needle, or a pie slice, and so on) for each level or combination of levels of the X variables. If you do not specify any X variable, the chart has a bar for each row in the data table.

X	Y	Type of Chart
none	one or more	If you do not specify a variable for categories, most statistics produce a bar (or a needle, or a pie slice, and so on) for each observation in the data table. This is useful when your data is already summarized. In that case, you usually specify Data as the statistic to plot. Each bar reflects the value of the Y variable. See Plot a Single Statistic, for an example.
one or two	none	Plots the counts for each level of the X variable. For two X variables, the counts for each level of both X variables are included (or overlaid) in a single chart. See Plot Counts of Variable Levels, for an example.
one or two	one or more	Plots the selected statistics for each level of the X variable. For two X variables, the selected statistics for each level of the X variables are included (or overlaid) in a single chart. See Plot Multiple Statistics, and Plot Multiple Statistics with Two X Variables, for examples.