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Pie charts aren't perfect but are useful when applied correctly. Two great things about pie charts: 1. From the shape you can tell you are looking portions of
by simulate 11y ago
Pie charts aren't perfect but are useful when applied correctly.
Two great things about pie charts:
1. From the shape you can tell you are looking portions of a whole. For example, a pie chart of market shares shows all businesses in the category.
2. You can easily guess the proportion of the segments relative to each other. For example, in this chart http://www.liv.ac.uk/~cll/lskills/WN/pie%20chart1.gif http://www.liv.ac.uk/~cll/lskills/WN/pie%20chart1.gif you can tell that football and rugby make up half the total and cricket, tennis, athletics, and other make up the other half.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWorks for that chart. But its depends on the author to draw the components that way, next to each other, and orient the chart so its obvious. And still, what other combinations add up to half? Can't tell from that chart. One with values side-by-side and a scale would allow you to do the math. Pie charts are not serious graphs. They are useful for arguing points, where you (deliberately?) don't want to confuse folks with numbers.
- jameshart 11y agoThat encourages you to make a spurious connection between football and rugby. Football and Other also make up a half, but that wasn't what you immediately spotted.
- hugh4 11y agoWell, they're both winter sports while the others (apart from "Other") are summer sports. But I take the point -- you only notice that connection because of the way they happen to be arranged on the graph.