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I understand there have been studies showing people don't estimate angles as well as linear distances but people go too far out of their way to avoid pie charts
by mapcar 12y ago
I understand there have been studies showing people don't estimate angles as well as linear distances but people go too far out of their way to avoid pie charts when parts within whole data is shown. The 1D mosaic plot is effectively a stacked bar chart but there I suspect there is also some bias given toward the largest component such that the relative proportions of the smaller components are not well discriminated.
- lynaghk 12y agoStephen Few has an excellent overview of why pie charts should be avoided: http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/save_the_pies_for_dessert.pdf http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intel... Neither pies nor mosaic charts should be used if you need exact readings of the data --- though mosaic plots do have the advantage of being rectangular, making segments much easier to label with values than the segments of pie charts.
- Gravityloss 12y agoI disagree partly. It's easier to estimate relative shares of a total from a pie chart compared to his linear examples.
- amalag 12y agoI am also not so convinced. I still like a simple pie-chart.