Band charts are not something new, but they are rarely seen in practice within business settings and that…it’s a big pity. They can be highly informative and provide rich context for visual analysis, especially when you are exploring the data. Consider this blog-post, a humble extension on Robert Mundigl´s original post on band charts which was written 15 years ago…and how you can implement them in Power BI.

If you read Rob´s post, you will find the following definition about band charts, which I quote:

“Basically, a band chart is a standard line chart enhanced with a shaded area displaying the upper and lower boundaries of groups of data (e.g., the range between the minimum and the maximum of all members of the category). Band charts are very often supplemented by another line showing the arithmetic mean (the average).

Band charts provide far more context to your visualization and more insight into your data. Especially if you have to explore unknown data sets. They are easy to implement, very intuitive, very effective and do not require one pixel more of your dashboard real estate than a standard single line chart.”

Ok, this definition of band charts is nice but let’s explore a bit more the calculations and visual parts needed, to visually see a band chart before proceeding on how to build it with Power BI.