On the Subject of Bar Charts
“The graph has no scale!”, the people cry, as they wield their pitchforks.
“Humbug,” I say.
Press the four bars in order to solve the module. The rest of this manual is dedicated to finding their order.
Take note of the bars' size order (from smallest to largest), their colours and their labels. All four labels are part of a single category which must be determined — these categories can be found in Appendix D474.
Each category has a list of labels — for each displayed label, its “value” is its position in its category's list (eg. the first of a category has value 1, the fifth has value 5, et cetera). Let A = the sum of these values, subtracting the length of the list until A is less than it, then adding 1 (eg. if the four values sum to 12 and the list is 8 elements long, A = 12 - 8 + 1 = 5).
If the label in position A of the list appears on the module, its bar comes first in the order. Otherwise, subtract 4 from A until it is less than 4, then add 1 — the Ath shortest bar comes first in the order.
Next, assign each bar a value according to its colour:
| Red | Yellow | Green | Blue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Let B = the sum of the values of the leftmost bar, the shortest bar and the first bar in the order. Subtract 3 until this value is less than 3, then add 1 — the Bth bar from left to right, skipping over the first bar in the order, is the second bar in the order.
- If the unit on the left is “Popularity”, the shortest of the two unordered bars is third in the order, and the tallest is fourth.
- Otherwise, if the unit on the left is “Frequency”, the tallest is third in the order, and the shortest is fourth.