During an initial exploratory analysis of one year of call-center data (≈200 000 records), you are asked to highlight which of eight complaint-type categories accounts for the greatest share of total call time so that supervisors can allocate training resources. The stakeholder wants a single graphic that shows the sum of minutes handled in each category side-by-side for quick comparison. Which visualization is MOST appropriate for this task?
Histogram of individual call durations using eight equal-width bins
Bar plot that shows the summed call minutes for each complaint category
Scatter plot with complaint category on the x-axis and call duration on the y-axis
Violin plot of call-duration distribution split by complaint category
A bar plot is designed to compare aggregated values across discrete categories, making it ideal for displaying the total (or average) call duration for each complaint type. By summarizing the numeric variable (call minutes) and plotting one bar per category, the viewer can immediately see which category consumes the most agent time.
A histogram is for continuous, binned data and would ignore the categorical labels. A violin plot emphasizes the distribution shape within each category, not the overall total, and could obscure which category dominates in aggregate. A scatter plot of category versus duration creates overplotting and still requires additional aggregation to answer the question, so it is less effective.
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