The Pareto Chart

A Pareto chart is a visual tool that helps identify the most important factors in a problem. It combines a bar graph and a line graph: the bars represent the frequency or impact of different causes, arranged from highest to lowest, while the line shows the cumulative total. This allows you to quickly see which issues contribute the most to a problem, so you can focus on fixing the biggest factors first. It’s based on the Pareto principle, meaning roughly 80% of problems are caused by 20% of causes.