DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks

In Defense of Pie Charts

So, join me today in celebrating a much-maligned hero, the pie chart. Or, if you really still can't bring yourself to do that, cut out the middle of it to make it a donut chart.

Bobby Johnson user avatar by
Bobby Johnson
·
Mar. 16, 18 · Opinion
Like (2)
Save
Tweet
Share
4.49K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

In the world of data analysis, there are few things more reviled than the pie chart. Among "serious" data people, it is at best trivial and naive, and at worst downright evil.

I do not agree with this. The pie chart is simple, but that is its beauty. It does exactly one thing and it does it well: it shows you how much different parts contribute to a whole. This isn't the only question you ever have about your data, but when it's the question you do have, the pie chart is perfect. That is not evil and it is not naive. It is data visualization doing what it should: taking something large and abstract and saying something simple about it that your brain can easily internalize.

For example, this pie chart tells me very clearly that there is one big thing and lots of tiny things:

This one shows me there is one big thing that's about half, and three others with a significant part:

This one shows me there are five things that are about the same:

Something that it doesn't show me is exactly which one is a little bit bigger than the other. To do that, we need a bar chart. This is the classic argument against a pie chart: with the bar chart, I get to see this extra piece of information of which one is slightly larger or smaller.
But I would argue that in the vast majority of cases, that's not actually what you care about. The information that the five things are about the same is almost certainly the useful and meaningful information in this chart. If you're obsessing about which one is a little bit bigger than the other (if one is 100 but the other is 101), then in almost all cases, you are missing the point. This is exactly the reason people hate non-zero-based graphs so much. You focus on small differences (which could even be measurement error) rather than the larger picture.

If you really need to know exactly what the numbers are, you just look at the numbers. The point of the visualization is to give you an intuition about the relative sizes of things. And here, the pie chart is dramatically better.

Now, I will agree that there are cases in which do you care about the small differences, just as there are cases where a non-zero-based graph is appropriate. But that's not a reason to abandon the pie chart entirely.

In fact, the pie chart has a particularly nice property that it is very clearly not good at the things it is not good at. Visualizations to be despised are ones that look like they are showing you one thing, but are actually showing you something else. The pie chart does not do this — it doesn't show you very much, but what it shows you doesn't lie.

So join me today in celebrating a much-maligned hero, the pie chart. Or if you really still can't bring yourself to do that, cut out the middle of it to make it a donut chart.

Chart

Published at DZone with permission of Bobby Johnson, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Automated Performance Testing With ArgoCD and Iter8
  • Three SQL Keywords in QuestDB for Finding Missing Data
  • Multi-Cloud Database Deep Dive
  • The Real Democratization of AI, and Why It Has to Be Closely Monitored

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: