Comments on: More on the Pie Chart

By: Bookmarks about Infographics

Bookmarks about Infographics — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:30:22 +0000

[...] - bookmarked by 2 members originally found by GokuthelastSaiyan on 2008-09-23 More on the Pie Chart http://www.enterprise-dashboard.com/2008/08/22/more-on-the-pie-chart/ - bookmarked by 1 members [...]

By: mr tom

mr tom — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:56:09 +0000

Either bars or a stacked bar works for me.

I appreciate the point about “being part of a whole”, but where items are charted in a bar chart, and are all one colour / style, then I expect them to be part of a series (or a whole), so I’m not sure I agree.

Plus the pie takes a whole lot of room. The stacked bar is good due to its size - it allows room for other measures.

One of my dashboards has a pie chart on it though. I was explicitly ordered to put it there, so that was that!

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:33:02 +0000

Nathan left out a simple table as a worthy alternative to a pie chart. His bubbly thing was really just a table with decorations on the numbers.

At least he listed the bar chart first.

The square pie chart is even more ineffective than the regular pie, because of a tendency to use more items, and a tendency for items to bee arbitrarily shaped to fit into the allotted space.

I believe the problem with pie charts (and their cousins, the gauges) is that people are so familiar with these graphics, they don’t realize the graphics aren’t telling them much.