> While statisticians have criticised them for decades, it’s hard to argue with this logic: “if pie charts are so bad, why are there so many of them?” A bar ch

> While statisticians have criticised them for decades, it’s hard to argue with this logic: “if pie charts are so bad, why are there so many of them?” A bar chart can represent many things. When you see a bar chart, you have to ask whether it's a trend over time, portions of a whole, values meaningful relative to each other (like benchmark results), etc. When you see a pie chart, you don't have to ask. It's portions of a whole. Pie charts communicate "what am I looking at?" instantly.