In an nice blog post about the horrors of the paired bar chart, Jonathan Schwabish proposes an elegant alternative, as follows. Instead of having parirs of yellow and blue bars, simply plot their endpoints, connected by a thin grey line, like in this plot of Gini coefficients before and after tax:

For those who want to go full Tufte, there is even this:

It seems to me that there should be a way to modify BarChart to do this -- haven't been able to figure out how. Does anyone have any ideas about how to produce a plot like the first of the two plots above (or the second, for that matter)? Notice that these are categorical data.

Here are the data used in these graphs:

giniCoefficients = {{"United States", 4.2, 5.7}, {"Israel", 4.1, 5.8}, {"UK", 4.1, 6.3}, {"Canada", 3.8, 5.5}, {"Greece", 3.8, 6.0}, {"Spain", 3.8, 5.7}, {"Australia", 3.8, 5.5}, {"Norway", 3.7, 5.7}, {"Korea", 3.7, 4.4}, {"Poland", 3.6, 6.5}, {"Taiwan", 3.6, 4.2}, {"Germany", 3.6, 6.0}, {"Finland", 3.5, 5.8}, {"Ireland", 3.5, 6.3}, {"Slovak Republic", 3.5, 5.4}, {"Japan", 3.5, 4.9}, {"Austria", 3.3, 5.5}, {"Netherlands", 3.3, 5.7}, {"Sweden", 3.3, 5.7}, {"Denmark", 3.3, 5.6}, {"Luxemberg", 3.2, 5.2}, {"Switzerland", 3.1, 4.7} } 

In an nice blog post about the horrors of the paired bar chart, Jonathan Schwabish proposes an elegant alternative, as follows. Instead of having pairs of yellow and blue bars, simply plot their endpoints, connected by a thin grey line, like in this plot of Gini coefficients before and after tax:

For those who want to go full Tufte, there is even this:

It seems to me that there should be a way to modify BarChart to do this -- haven't been able to figure out how. Does anyone have any ideas about how to produce a plot like the first of the two plots above (or the second, for that matter)? Notice that these are categorical data.

Here are the data used in these graphs:

giniCoefficients = {{"United States", 4.2, 5.7}, {"Israel", 4.1, 5.8}, {"UK", 4.1, 6.3}, {"Canada", 3.8, 5.5}, {"Greece", 3.8, 6.0}, {"Spain", 3.8, 5.7}, {"Australia", 3.8, 5.5}, {"Norway", 3.7, 5.7}, {"Korea", 3.7, 4.4}, {"Poland", 3.6, 6.5}, {"Taiwan", 3.6, 4.2}, {"Germany", 3.6, 6.0}, {"Finland", 3.5, 5.8}, {"Ireland", 3.5, 6.3}, {"Slovak Republic", 3.5, 5.4}, {"Japan", 3.5, 4.9}, {"Austria", 3.3, 5.5}, {"Netherlands", 3.3, 5.7}, {"Sweden", 3.3, 5.7}, {"Denmark", 3.3, 5.6}, {"Luxemberg", 3.2, 5.2}, {"Switzerland", 3.1, 4.7} }