4 ms·

> Everyone loves pie! Oh gosh, no! Count me among those who greatly dislike pie charts in almost every context. "Almost never use a pie chart for data" https

> Everyone loves pie! Oh gosh, no! Count me among those who greatly dislike pie charts in almost every context. "Almost never use a pie chart for data" https://theconversation.com/heres-why-you-should-almost-never-use-a-pie-chart-for-your-data-214576 https://theconversation.com/heres-why-you-should-almost-neve... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38912534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38912534

tmoertel 1y ago
In early 1990s I worked at a mid-sized software company making software to help big businesses do big-business stuff. One day, another programmer pops into my cube and says: "Hey, how do you draw a 3d pie chart?" "What?" I asked. "Why?" "Well, Excel can do them. And somebody saw one. Now they want our software to draw them." "Are you serious?" "Yes, I need it like now. I'm supposed to demo it later today." So I get out a sheet of paper, draw some triangles, and work out that projection math. He walks away with the paper. Half an hour later, he calls me over. "Hey, it's a 3d pie chart!" And there it was: On a screen I was all too familiar with, where the 2d pie chart used to be, was a squat 3d pie chart, looking like it was a fat inch thick. Of course, there was too much margin above and below, because of the flatter aspect ratio, but hey, it was 3d and it was good enough for a demo. I think that was the first day I realized that programming can be used for evil.
hinkley 1y ago
3d pie charts are literally the devil. It's 3d pie charts, dot charts, pie charts, and any chart that has the origin set to greater than 0 in descending order of evilness. We need a ## anniversary edition of Lying with Statistics.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  If your uptime (or your percentage score in a class) is best understood/consumed on a chart with an origin of zero, you’re having a very bad time.
  - bmm6o 1y ago
    What you should really track and chart is your downtime.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    If you’re comparing your uptime before and after a fix, you’re lying to everyone by not showing the origin. Also why are people looking at uptime unless there was an outage? At which point you do need to show zero anyway.

tmoertel 1y ago

In early 1990s I worked at a mid-sized software company making software to help big businesses do big-business stuff. One day, another programmer pops into my cube and says: "Hey, how do you draw a 3d pie chart?" "What?" I asked. "Why?" "Well, Excel can do them. And somebody saw one. Now they want our software to draw them." "Are you serious?" "Yes, I need it like now. I'm supposed to demo it later today." So I get out a sheet of paper, draw some triangles, and work out that projection math. He walks away with the paper. Half an hour later, he calls me over. "Hey, it's a 3d pie chart!" And there it was: On a screen I was all too familiar with, where the 2d pie chart used to be, was a squat 3d pie chart, looking like it was a fat inch thick. Of course, there was too much margin above and below, because of the flatter aspect ratio, but hey, it was 3d and it was good enough for a demo. I think that was the first day I realized that programming can be used for evil.

hinkley 1y ago

3d pie charts are literally the devil. It's 3d pie charts, dot charts, pie charts, and any chart that has the origin set to greater than 0 in descending order of evilness. We need a ## anniversary edition of Lying with Statistics.

sokoloff 1y ago
If your uptime (or your percentage score in a class) is best understood/consumed on a chart with an origin of zero, you’re having a very bad time.
- bmm6o 1y ago
  What you should really track and chart is your downtime.
- hinkley 1y ago
  If you’re comparing your uptime before and after a fix, you’re lying to everyone by not showing the origin. Also why are people looking at uptime unless there was an outage? At which point you do need to show zero anyway.