[HN Gopher] Stop Using Pie-Charts
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Stop Using Pie-Charts
Author : t_christensen
Score : 10 points
Date : 2022-02-06 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (earthly.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (earthly.dev)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The first example undermines the argument. It's a demonstration
| that the author doesn't understand a tool.
|
| That pie chart tells me that the slices are approximately the
| same, which is a useful message to effectively deliver visually.
| Pie charts are great for understanding relative value.
|
| Divining or comparing the precise values is not a good use for
| it.
| [deleted]
| codeptualize wrote:
| I would say there is a place for pie charts. The article seems to
| have accuracy as ultimate goal, if you need that accuracy; fully
| agree, pie chart isn't the best visualization. But, data
| visualization is often about story telling, and the small
| percentage differences don't always matter.
|
| For example, if you are telling a story about how one of the
| slices is much bigger than the other ones, pie (and donut)
| charts, are a very effective and visually interesting way to tell
| that story. The other case where I like pie charts (and I do
| prefer donuts btw) is when the data isn't very accurate and
| "hiding" some of the detail is actually a better representation
| of reality.
|
| So yeah, pick the chart that works best for the situation (and if
| possible, give multiple options), but I do not agree with writing
| off the whole chart type. Radar charts are more questionable imo
| haha.
|
| Data visualization is in essence trading accuracy for
| readability, how much you want and need depends on the goal,
| audience and data.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Yes. Yes. 1000x yes. Pie charts are bad and there is almost no
| justification for using them. Humans _are_ bad at estimating area
| - and donut charts help fix this. I actually pretend donut charts
| are "curved line charts".
|
| Also, engineers are notoriously bad at making visualizations.
| Sorry if this offends you. I would recommend _everyone_ here
| spend some time looking at pretty visualizations and maybe
| reading about it
| elkos wrote:
| Would you like to share any resources for good practices?
| mercyandgrace wrote:
| I really like Stephen Few.
|
| https://www.perceptualedge.com/
| kccqzy wrote:
| Edward Tufte's various books like _The Visual Display of
| Quantitative Information_ and _Envisioning Information_ are
| old but good books.
|
| That said, they are more of an inspiration than a practical
| handbook of templates to make your own visualization.
| bitwize wrote:
| Pie charts are useful when there are large disparities between
| some of the data items. Like, here are our total expenses for
| last year, we spent 6% on administration, 14% on facilities, 11%
| on R&D, 33% on manufacturing, and 36% on sales and marketing. You
| can see at a glance, even with human eyesight's poor judgement of
| areas, what the dominating two expense areas are. Or, you know,
| here's a breakdown of the OS our dev team members use: 85% use
| Windows, 11% use macOS, 3% use Linux and 1% use "other".
|
| Oftentimes they will be labelled as well with the exact
| percentage numbers which helps. It's not really a scientific
| visualization tool, but it adds punch to a presentation when you
| want to show that one or more subsegments of a whole really
| dominate the rest.
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