To display the value breakdown between starting balance and ending balance across customer segments, which visual should you use?

• A. ribbon chart
• B. stacked bar chart
• C. treemap
• D. waterfall chart

Answer: (C)

You’re aiming to show how the total value in each customer segment breaks down into starting balance and ending balance, and you want to compare both across multiple segments at a glance. A treemap fits this well because it shows parts of a whole as rectangles, with size representing magnitude. By organizing the data so each segment is a block and then subdividing that block into starting balance and ending balance tiles, you can immediately see how much each balance contributes within a segment and compare those contributions across all segments. This makes the relative proportions easy to scan, even with many segments.

Ribbon charts focus on ranking and changes over time, not a fixed part‑to‑whole breakdown. A stacked bar chart can show two values per category but often emphasizes the total of the bar and can be harder to compare proportions across many categories at once. A waterfall chart illustrates how a starting value evolves through sequential changes to reach an ending value, which isn’t the intended cross‑segment breakdown here.