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Please don't use pie charts
- jgrahamc 15y agoFunny to see this here. There's a follow up on what to use: http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/what-to-use-instead-of-pie-chart.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/what-to-use-instead-of-pie-chart...
- lloeki 15y agoThe (almost) only valid use of pie charts: http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html
- latch 15y agowhat about: http://28.media.tumblr.com/FJtUhxZXBj8kb8wlM4Qly4Ubo1_500.jpg http://28.media.tumblr.com/FJtUhxZXBj8kb8wlM4Qly4Ubo1_500.jp... ?
- roadnottaken 15y agopac-man pie-chart: http://www.hemmy.net/images/games/pacmanchart.jpg http://www.hemmy.net/images/games/pacmanchart.jpg
- hugh3 15y ago"This is a pie chart describing my favourite bars. And this is a bar graph describing my favourite pies!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J8QU1m0Ng http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J8QU1m0Ng
- Mordor 15y agoParticularly the last one, although it's disappointing to see they stole my company logo :-(
- pointyhat 15y agoPie charts are fine if you use them carefully. Funnel charts are a sin though: http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/bad-graphics-funnel-chart/ http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/bad-graphics-funnel-chart/
- astrodust 15y agoPie charts are never fine. They're always useless chartjunk which serve little to no purpose. They're used all the time by people who should know better. Even a case of comparing A vs B is better represented by bars than pie slices.
- pointyhat 15y agoBars are horrid for working out "what portion of a whole" is represented. I don't care what iTunes does - it looks like shit.
- seabee 15y agoPies give you an at-a-glance indication of whether something is more or less than a half (obtuse/reflex angle) or a quarter (right angle). This seems to be the sum total of their utility. Stacked bars may be ugly but at least you can use the segments to make more precise measurements.
- mtogo 15y agoThat.. I had no idea that kind of chart existed. I think.. I think i need to sit down.
- ra 15y agoI think pie charts are a nice way to convey the ratio of 2 or 3 elements, particularly when the actual numbers are unimportant. But I agree they are sometimes used when a bar graph would be much more appropriate.
- jamesbkel 15y ago>particularly when the actual numbers are unimportant. That's more or less my philosophy on pie charts. I find them helpful to use at the outset of a presentation to help provide some context for what's to follow (for example, the relative sales of Divisions A, B & C). That said, I have no sympathy for anyone who uses side-by-side pie charts in order to make comparisons.
- Mavrik 15y agoSo he took a single case where pie chart has been used wrongly and from that extrapolated we shouldn't be using pie charts? Seriously... either explain your logic with supports or don't bother writing such misleading pieces of text.
- grimen 15y agoYes, this is not even reminding of science. Someone felt like writing a blog post and needed something to rant...pie charts, wtf?
- cubicle67 15y agoftfa: - they fail to convey information because people have a really hard time judging relative areas instead of lengths. - there are times when a pie chart is appropriate - once you get data that isn't widely different or you have lots of categories your pie chart would be better as either a bar chart, or as simply a data table - pic of horrid "word features" chart - why is it bad? - releases occur chronologically, but the data is displayed in a clockwise fashion with no obvious starting point - the pie chart has no values on it at all, so we are left staring at the chart trying to guess the relative sizes of the slices - the chart is 3D - which makes it extra bad for estimating relative sizes - 3D pie charts are simply an abomination - making them 3D just makes them even harder to interpret
- astrodust 15y agoI have yet to see a single example of where a pie chart was superior to any of the obvious alternatives. They are particularly troublesome for those that have less than perfect RGB vision, and even then I often find myself trying to deduce which arbitrary shade of blue is which due to the fact they're sandwiched between two other random colors. If you wanted to make a chart that looked impressive but contained as little information as possible, you'd have to work to do better than the pie chart.
- btn 15y agoEdward Tufte gives the pie chart a more succinct and decisive treatment in "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information": A table is nearly always better than a dumb pie chart; the only worse design than a pie chart is several of them, for then the viewer is asked to compare quantities located in spatial disarray both within and between charts [...] Given their low density and failure to order numbers along a visual dimension, pie charts should never be used. With some additional discussion on his website: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00018S http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
- vannevar 15y agoTufte is simply wrong here. A pie chart implicitly conveys an additional piece of information which a series-style chart like a table or bar chart does not: that the information presented represents some meaningful total. A table listing percentages can achieve the same result, as can a single bar, but both require closer inspection. For a small number of variables, and particularly where there is a large disparity between the values, a pie chart is better. Unfortunately, many people break this contract with the viewer and present a pie chart solely to show the ratios, in which case I would agree that it is poor presentation.
- achompas 15y agoSee jgrahamc's post above for a great alternative: a set of bar charts color-coded into subsets. Much more effective than a big pie chart. Many other "part-of-a-whole" charts improve on pie charts as well.
- tel 15y agoShowing the ratios is fine: your meaningful total is their total. For instance, showing revenue breakdown while trying to explain that some department pulls more than the rest. Here, without normalization (via pie charts, percentages, stacked bars) it becomes more difficult to compare the ratios. This perfectly mirrors the idea of sufficient statistics for a particular inference. I'll also argue that pie charts are still terrible ways to display "data of bounded measure". The primary arguments are (a) people are quite terrible at doing accurate comparisons with area or, worse, arglength and (b) it tends to destroy the consistency of you labels since there's not a clear preferred ordering in a pie chart. In this case, I'd say that stacked bar charts or empirical empirical CDFs do a much better job displaying bounded data, and, if you can suffer removing the bound, then simple bar charts or dot plots do it best. I'd be amazed to hear of a time that a pie chart is actually optimal. I think perhaps the best argument going forward is if ratios are sufficient for your story even with the labeling obscured (it just adds noise). Here, the ambiguity of the ordering on a pie chart might provide exactly the right vehicle. I still wouldn't know whether it should be computed by arclength or area, though.
- alphadogg 15y agoIn other news, people blog about other meaningless pet peeves... Seriously, for any chart type, there are cases of misuse, even if the over-glorified Edward Tufte says no.
- vog 15y agoThis reminds me of the PGF manual: http://mirror.ctan.org/graphics/pgf/base/doc/generic/pgf/pgfmanual.pdf http://mirror.ctan.org/graphics/pgf/base/doc/generic/pgf/pgf... In section 7.6 Plots and Charts the author explains very clearly the typical issues with bar diagrams and pie charts. Moreover, the whole chapter 7 Guidelines on Graphics is worth reading even for those who are not interested in the PGF package. The PGF manual is one of the best introductions into that topic I'm aware of.
- buro9 15y agoAnd if you do use a pie chart: * Start at 12 O'Clock * Put the segments in sequence of size (smallest first or biggest first going clockwise) * Add a legend or labels * Make sure any colours you use can still be differentiated when printed greyscale Honestly, I'd tolerate them more if I could just understand which segment was bigger than another segment and had some meaningful way in which to vaguely guess the value behind a segment.
- TheCapn 15y agoWhat pie charts are good at is providing a visual comparison of a series of values that compose a whole. Pie charts work when you're trying to represent a percentage of a total value. The example in the link about "features" is crap because unless you're given a value of "100 features were implemented across these versions" the comparison that Word 2000 and 2003 provided similar values is meaningless. Its not that you shouldn't use a pie chart, it is just about knowing when to use the pie chart to represent your data
- Vivtek 15y agoAnother aspect - pie charts beyond about three wedges are utterly useless to the colorblind. The OP's Microsoft example is particularly egregious in that aspect as well - I can't distinguish most of those colors, especially given the minuscule legend. So the entire pie chart is quite literally wasted on me. A blank rectangle would convey nearly as much information.
- jpablo 15y agoAs a colorblind myself I couldn't agree more. But this is not limited to pie charts, any kind of graphics that uses more than 3 colors to identify labels in a list is completely illegible for me.
- eru 15y agoThe smaller the coloured areas, the harder it gets for me. So a stacked bar is mostly fine, but a scatter plot where the points are only distinguished by colour is impossible to read.
- Vivtek 15y agoGranted, but at least in a bar chart you can extract something. On a pie there's nothing but color.
- Macha 15y agoI'm not colour blind and even I had some difficulty telling some of those colours behind.
- nokcha 15y ago>pie charts beyond about three wedges are utterly useless to the colorblind The problem lies in using a color-coded legend, not in using pie charts per se. The slices of a pie chart can be labelled directly (instead of indirectly via a legend), e.g., http://www.fedstats.gov/kids/mapstats/graphics/pie.gif http://www.fedstats.gov/kids/mapstats/graphics/pie.gif
- raldi 15y agoRe: the claim that groups of pie charts are especially awful, I have a counterexample. How would you express this more clearly without a series of pie charts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Support_For_Direct_Popular_Vote.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Support_For_Direct_Popular...
- jgrahamc 15y agoLike this: http://imgur.com/rGvFW http://imgur.com/rGvFW The example you give falls into the 'multiple pie chart' nightmare where it's hard to compare the percentages across charts. At the same time I can easily see how far from a majority each group is and also the pattern in abstaining from the question.
- tel 15y agoOut of curiosity, what did you use to make that?
- jgrahamc 15y agoApple Numbers
- raldi 15y agoThe problem with using stacked bars in political situations is that the 50% threshold is critical. Without reading the numbers, it's much harder to tell with stacked bars whether a close vote (or poll) is at 48% or 52%.
- jgrahamc 15y agoYou don't need to go back to a pie chart for that. On the chart above that I created there is a clear 50% line in the middle. If necessary, it could be darkened to make the mid point more obvious.
- wiredfool 15y agoBut that is still not an accurate view, since the number of independents, democrats, and republicans aren't the same.
- topbanana 15y agoMore pie chart hatred from a guy I used to work with. http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Pie-Charts-Are-Bad/ http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Pie-Charts-Are-Bad/ http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201109/Blog/The-Pie-Chart-So-Bad-I-Had-To-Censor-It/ http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201109/Blog/T... http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201012/Blog/Continued-Pie-Chart-Hatred/ http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201012/Blog/C...
- k0mplex 15y agoPeople would use bar charts if they had a name as delicious as a pie chart. Perhaps we should rename them popsicle charts?
- eru 15y agoHow about renaming them pub charts?
- giberson 15y agoPeople like pie charts. How do I know? Because they ask for them. You're analysis for why pie charts are inferior at conveying information compared to other forms of data presentation are thus moot.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- klbarry 15y agoThis fellow has been heavily downvoted (at 1:32 EST, anyway), but he has a point. For conveying information, pie charts are definitely not the best. To make an audience happy with your presentation, sometimes it is just best to give them the pies they want. Most laymen are used to them and find them friendlier than more complex charts.
- giberson 15y agoFor what it is worth, couple of things I regret about that post. I was terse, and the tone comes off arrogant. Mainly, my use of "You're" instead of "Your" which I'm usually careful not to mistake. I'd like to think those are the source of the down votes--as I'd hate to believe we've forgotten the golden rule "customer is king". If their client comes to them and says "I want a pie chart" they should not give them 48 reasons why pie charts are terrible. They should just give them a pie chart. I'm not suggesting that when ever they have data to convey their first thought should be to use a pie chart. I'm simply reminding them pie charts are a commonality of customer data visualization requests--hate them all they want they still will be using them.
- porterhaney 15y agoThere is a really good exception to this rule. When you're only conveying two options in a pie chart it's much easier to discern a winner then in a table or in a bar graph.
- rgrieselhuber 15y agoWe joke at Ginza that there is a direct correlation between the usage of pie charts and software revenue.
- ImprovedSilence 15y agoI don't know what your talking about, pie charts provide plenty of useful information. source: http://graphjam.memebase.com/ http://graphjam.memebase.com/
- paperwork 15y agoStephen Few has pretty good books on the topic: http://www.perceptualedge.com/ http://www.perceptualedge.com/ He is very good at explaining Tufte's work. The best part of his books and website are comparisons between a typical charts or dashboards and his re-designs. Following is more relevant, his article on pie charts (PDF): http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/08-21-07.pdf http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/08-21-07.pdf
- dasil003 15y agoI was going to leave a smartass comment about the deliciousness of pie when I scrolled down and realized that I left a similar smartass comment on the post last time I saw it years ago.