Better than Pie [Chart]!
Fact: Did you know that pie charts date back over 200 years to 1801?
I found this example in AIG’s annual report. My intention isn’t to be critical of AIG, it’s to show a more effective solution. Recently, I wrote a post that ranked the top annual reports based on a few data visualization basics and AIG fell towards the bottom of that list. Take a look at the pie chart below. Let me ask one very simple question. Why include the pie chart? The data is already present and organized in descending order in the table, which is really ample.
I can only presume they did because people have been conditioned to always think, pie chart, when looking at parts of a whole. When I look at the pie chart below, all I want to do is slap down a $20 bill, pick a color and spin it!
Statisticians tend to regard pie charts as a poor method of displaying information. While pie charts are common in business and economics, they are uncommon in scientific literature. One reason for this is that it is more difficult for comparisons to be made between the size of items in a chart when area is used instead of length. …This suggests that length is a better scale to use, since perceived differences would be linearly related to actual differences.
One of the purposes of a chart or graph is to give the person looking at it a quick and effective means of comparing multiple values. Using the pie chart alone in the example below, it’s nearly impossible to compare the values accurately. The one thing I can quickly deduce is that it has been a long time since visiting the money wheel at Foxwoods!
Below is the chart that I would prefer to see when looking at parts of a whole. I like this style because it’s easy to create, very effective and doesn’t use Excel Charts, which can be maddening to get just right. Albeit not perfect, it’s pretty close and much easier to create. You really don’t even need the numbers, but for this example, I wanted to show them to attest the scale works.
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July 21st, 2008 at 8:04 am
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