Choosing the right chart depends mainly on what you want the audience to understand from the data.

A simple approach is to match the chart to the purpose:

• Bar charts for comparing categories

• Line charts for trends over time

• Scatter plots for relationships between variables

• Pie or donut charts for simple proportions

• Heatmaps for patterns across larger datasets

In practice, the goal is clarity. The best chart is the one that makes the key insight obvious within a few seconds.