Peter Veldhuizen Sydney Australia It is also possible to color-code or partition each bar to a different category column within your data, allowing you to view how contributions of different categories are contributed by each bar or cluster of bars in the bar graph. Peter Veldhuizen A bar chart displays data in columns, whereas bar charts are technical analysis terms that describe displaying the opening, high, low, closing (sometimes the opening is left out) prices of a specific security over a given period using a vertical bar.