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bar family

bar-range

Floating bars showing a low-to-high range per category.

Each bar is positioned between its minimum and maximum value, not anchored to zero. Reads as "category X falls between A and B". Common for cost ranges, salary bands, asset price ranges.

When to use

Showing variability or range without summarising to a midpoint. Cost benchmarking ($/MWh ranges) and salary surveys are textbook cases.

When NOT to use

You have a single value per category (use bar) or paired comparisons (use dumbbell).

Rhetorical roles

  • compare
  • distribute

Variants & related

Required primitives

  • has_axis_titles
  • has_data_labels

Optional primitives

  • has_title
  • has_source_note

Common anti-patterns

  • missing-label
  • unsourced-data

Disambiguation rules

  • Bars do NOT share a baseline. Each starts at its category's minimum value.
  • If the bar has dots at the endpoints, it is dumbbell, not bar-range.
  • If bars are cumulative (each starts where previous ended), it is waterfall.