5 ms·
Can you give me a single example where a pie chart would better convey information than a table? The only visualization more useless than a pie-chart is a 3d p
by PheonixPharts 3y ago
Can you give me a single example where a pie chart would better convey information than a table?
The only visualization more useless than a pie-chart is a 3d pie-chart.
- chefandy 3y agoSee my response to your comment above. You're ignoring the reason data visualizations exist in the first place.
- PheonixPharts 3y ago> You're ignoring the reason data visualizations exist in the first place. My opinion on pie-charts and poor visualization comes from years of studying data visualization, not ignoring it. Would you argue that Tufte doesn't value data visualization since he holds the same views?
- chefandy 3y agoTufte can back up what he says with reason and examples, rather than repeatedly making the same assertion. Just saying "well Tufte says so" is a pretty blatant appeal to authority.
- _dain_ 3y ago>Can you give me a single example where a pie chart would better convey information than a table? there's a specific type of pie chart that's good: a "clock chart". this is when you're depicting how long some contiguous sequence of events took as a fraction of a whole duration. you map the start and end to the 12 o'clock position, and the intervening ones wrap around clockwise. e.g. the history of the universe with the big bang at the top, then formation of stars, galaxies, planet earth, dinoaurs etc as you go around clockwise. then human history is a tiny slice at like 30 seconds to midnight or whatever it is. this works because it piggybacks on people's existing strong spatio-temporal intuition for clock faces. time is a flat circle.
- PheonixPharts 3y agoI'll concede that this is a reasonable case.