Cells as Category Values

Question

I have a table that has a column of categories, and then a column of values. I'd like to build a chart that used the first column as the values for the categories of the chart. Is there a way to do this?
If my table had
MATH 10
READING 5
SCIENCE 9
It'd build a bar chart using 10, 5 and 9 as values, and to the left, the values would be listed as MATH, READING and SCIENCE.
The charts that I'm being asked to do have a common format, but different categories. So the next graph I have to build from this template may have SPEECH, MATH, and GYM, for example. Right now, I need to alter those categores by changing each line of the chart by hand.
Thanks!

Answer 1

A simpler workflow could be:
1. Paste everyone's raw score data into table 1 (name, test taken, score).
2. In table 2, type the person's name in cell A1. The table automatically fills with all tests and scores for that person and plots those test scores. Alternatively, the name could be typed into a separate one-cell table (as Jerry did) if you modify my formula (shown below) a bit.
For the simplest case I have assumed the following:
1. All test scores for a particular person are to be charted. We can work around this easily if this assumption is not true.
2. No zero scores for a test that was taken. It appears that a 1 is the lowest score, even if all questions were missed.
3. No repeated tests. We can kind of work around this as well, I'm just taking the easiest case to start.
Table 2 is set up as follows (one time setup):
1. Cells A2 and down are pre-filled with all possible test categories. In other words, type them in manually. Only needs to be done once.
2. Type the following formula into B2 and fill down to end of the column. This formula matches the name and test type (table 1 columns A and B, respectively) and returns the score (table 1 column C). If there is a possibility that someone took a test more than once, the formula can be supplemented with a COUNTIFS test to throw an error.
=SUMIFS(Table 1 :: C,Table 1 :: A,$A$1,Table 1 :: B,A2)
3. Create a chart of B2 through end of the table (i.e., chart the scores for ALL test categories)
4. Filter table 2 so only rows with scores greater than zero are displayed. The chart will only plot the displayed rows.
Now, all you need to do is paste the raw test scores in table 1 and type the person's name in the upper left cell (A1) of table 2 and you have a chart. I can post an image if it would help you visualize this.