means A diagram, table, or graph that organizes information visually so patterns and relationships can be seen at a glance.

from From Latin 'charta' (a leaf of papyrus, a sheet of paper), which traveled through French 'charte' into English. The same root branched off into 'card' and 'charter' — all of them, at heart, just things written on a sheet. The sense of a navigational map came first; the graph-and-table meaning followed once people realized you could plot more than coastlines on a flat surface.