Here at DSA Insights, I often beat up on pie charts and for good reasons. In trying to keep an open mind, I found one fairly good use of them for ages 2-8.

Thank you for your insights!

Thinking about your comment about using pies to introduce fractions… This may in fact be true, but I think that pies can only really be effective for a small number of uniformly sized segments, to illustrate 1/N, where N can be at most about 8. Perhaps you could also get away with the progression of 1/2, 1/4, and two 1/8 wedges, similar to your daughter’s dataviz project.

Beyond these simple examples, you’re beyond the usefulness of the pie. Don’t try to teach 5/8 with just two pieces, for example; instead use five blue ones and three yellow ones. Don’t try to illustrate twelfths, either, because it’s too many to count by eye, and the angles are also too small to be measured by eye.

I will commend the simplicity of your daughter’s dashboard, and the absence of extraneous decorations. Most children go overboard with their crayons, and I’ve seen middle-aged professionals do the same. Maybe not with crayons, of course, but with their PowerPoint color schemes and default styles.

Not taking into consideration the quality of the photo (camera phone) and 3-D shadow, it is difficult to tell. Good point that Tufte would never use a pie chart. A better note would have been the minimal amount of chartjunk. Thanks for the comment!

Well, I don’t know, maybe. But then you messed up this:

20% Blue
30% Yellow
50% Pink

To me the blue and yellow both look like 25%. And whether they are or are not effective in introducing fractions, pie charts can never be Tufte-compliant.