Pie Charts - Just Say No
For those who have known me for a while, my antipathy towards pie-charts (and donut charts!) should be nothing new
FWIW, it’s not something off the cuff - pie-charts are, almost always better off being replaced by something different (bar graphs being the obvious replacement).
Why? Because
- Quantity is represented by angles and humans are VERY bad at identifying differences in angles (87° vs 82°?
- Labeling slices ends up confusing stuff even more
- Small percentages (which might be important) get goofy
- Anything above 2-3 items in the pie chart are crazy difficult to figure out
- Don’t get me started on donut charts, that just take all of the above, and make it Even harder to deal with
And it’s not just me, Stephen Few (Perceptual Edge. Think “grandmaster of all things Visualizaion”. Hell, he, literally, invented the bullet graph…) wrote the definitive “DO NOT USE PIE CHARTS” article back in 2007.And yeah, if you don’t feel like reading the whole pdf, read this Kubler-Ross-ish take on The Five Stages of Grief Over the Death of Pie Charts.
To recap
- Don’t use pie charts. Because,
- There are plenty of much better alternatives
- And for all that’s holy, no donut charts. EVAR.
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