Rescaling the Chart's Y-axis

Why should you rescale the Y-axis?

When presenting student grades on a chart it is likely that you will not need any values below 60. To clearly demonstrate the difference between grades you might want to rescale the Y-axis. Doing this will ensure that there is a larger gap between the bars for your students' grades without the need to stretch your graph. Rescaling the Y-axis in this manner will highlight differences between grades and make them easy to spot.

In general, rescaling the Y-axis may be useful when presenting values that are all higher than a certain point (or are all lower than a certain point). You could for instance format your Y-axis to include only numbers that are below zero if necessary.

Rescaling is also very helpful when you want to present data in steps: Be it 1 (for discrete math), 5 (for student grades), or a billion (for population growth).

The video on the right shows you a simple tutorial on how to rescale your Y-axis, but the exact same steps apply to rescaling the X-axis as well. Adjust your axes so that all your data is included on the chart and all unnecessary junk is excluded.

Rescaling axes is easy and is yet another tool that will help you on your path to make professional charts with minimum effort.