Warning: This post doesn't have anything to do with movies, but people (2 people, in total) have indicated they'd like to know more about my distaste for Pie Charts. I, for one, am a people-pleaser, so pardon this post, but I'm just giving the people what they want. I *promise* this won't turn into a blog about graphs. (But I cannot promise that there won't be more graphs.) Thank you, KBS and Angeleah, for prompting me to raise awareness of the
atrocities happening in Microsoft Excel each and every day.
Pie Charts are for teaching children math. I'm not against that use-case. I also like them when used for comedic purposes. What I am against is hate crimes toward data, and a majority of pie charts are just that - an injustice to the data. Just because Excel has a feature doesn't mean it's a useful feature or that you have to use it. (Though, I'll come clean here: I've enabled Excel to read the contents of a cell aloud in the past. I was trying to computerize my entire job so I could just dial into a call, hit enter, have Excel read the client the analysis and then go make a sandwich. It didn't end well; we were out of cheese.)
In all seriousness, I'm not a very opinionated person but I have quite strong feelings about pie charts. If you'd like to know more, please read this PDF by Stephen Few (who is badass) about pie charts. If you don't really care to further the cause of eradicating crimes against data by reading the PDF and educating yourself, a summary of my feelings toward pie charts can be found in the pie chart below. (But I think you're terrible for not caring enough to read it.)
Click to enlarge tiny font.
Special thanks to KwikMetrics.com for additional data insights.
Wondering what this blog is about? Me, too. This might help.
Pie Charts are for teaching children math. I'm not against that use-case. I also like them when used for comedic purposes. What I am against is hate crimes toward data, and a majority of pie charts are just that - an injustice to the data. Just because Excel has a feature doesn't mean it's a useful feature or that you have to use it. (Though, I'll come clean here: I've enabled Excel to read the contents of a cell aloud in the past. I was trying to computerize my entire job so I could just dial into a call, hit enter, have Excel read the client the analysis and then go make a sandwich. It didn't end well; we were out of cheese.)
In all seriousness, I'm not a very opinionated person but I have quite strong feelings about pie charts. If you'd like to know more, please read this PDF by Stephen Few (who is badass) about pie charts. If you don't really care to further the cause of eradicating crimes against data by reading the PDF and educating yourself, a summary of my feelings toward pie charts can be found in the pie chart below. (But I think you're terrible for not caring enough to read it.)
Click to enlarge tiny font.
Wondering what this blog is about? Me, too. This might help.
I want to waterboard the person who decided "barely differentiated shades of the same color" should be used for 9 of the 10 color schemes in Microsoft Office
ReplyDeletedata confession...
ReplyDeletei used a line graph today when a bar chart was probably more appropriate.
possibly the most effective pie chart I have ever seen.
ReplyDelete