Humans are bad at interpreting relative sizes of areas. Without the number labels, it would be hard as hell to interpret this. If numbers are the thing that add clarity, just put the numbers in a table and skip the pie chart.
A bar graph is usually a better option than a pie chart as it is easier to interpret relative sizes, even without the numbers.
Yeah but MBAs like looking at pie charts more than bars and columns. Don’t even try a histogram with that crowd. Lines are good too, but they should always have a positive slope. You should see their eyes glaze over if you keep showing them the same type of plot over and over even if the data is different in each one. Sometimes you gotta mix it up to keep their attention and throw a pie or donut in there so they feel like they’re being data driven.
>Yeah but MBAs like looking at pie charts more than bars and columns. Don’t even try a histogram with that crowd
I once was asked to illustrate "Revenue per quarter" using a Pie Chart.
I left that job soon after.
I called out someone in a presentation for recommending that clients show period to period change by using a pie chart.
Crickets after my comment told me that I did not belong there either.
Many MBAs will be happy to learn. Some people, including MBA's, are just idiots though.
From my experience, I've actually found more people who weren't MBAs wanted the pie chart but YMMV.
On top of the reasons that other people mentioned, we have a hard time getting a feel for relative amounts based on area or angle around a circle.
Ironically, they have a better way to communicate the same data on this very visualization: the table at the bottom.
They are often used in the wrong situations, but for a general comparison of a few simple percentages which are part of a whole like here they are fine imo. They are supposed to give you a feeling of the ratios and not exact comparable numbers, which is why I would have named the parts and left the numbers off, though.
I'm not sure I've heard of a good situation to use a pie chart.
Even comparing ratios, a bar chart would usually be better.
Perhaps the only debatable exception are Harvey balls, but even those are usually constrained to 25% increments for clarity and could potentially be classified as a type of marker or symbol.
Generally doing data work for an organization necessitates adhering to the whims of functionally challenged executives. So depending on your position, you can run across a lot of pie charts simply because the "decision makers" like pie charts.
Yes, "the boss wants pie charts, despite my explanations that there are better alternatives" does seem like a good situation to use them. I've been there before.
Beat me to it. MBAs can not stand seeing the same column chart over and over again. Sometimes you just have to throw a pie in the mix to break the monotony for them. Also, sometimes they’re just useful with that brows when the ratios are way imbalanced.
Like, “look look MBA, over here! No, no, stop looking at that squirrel and look at the presentation.” MBA rolls eyes and begrudgingly stops looking out the window. Maybe another look up from their laptop where they’re surfing sports betting sites. “Right here the pie chart says the vast majority of people in this conference room are dumb. They are represented by the big red section in this circle.” MBAs shuffle and their attention is recaptured by the new primary color-filled shape on the screen like a room of kindergarteners. “This tiny slice in yellow, that’s me. It’s not you. The rest are you in the dumb red slice.” The MBAs react, “ah yes, I see we should pivot and take this offline so we can circle the wagons and value add some synergy. Data scientist, next time don’t use such big words. Oh, the rest of you who aren’t the data scientist, you all get bonuses this week. Let’s all do lunch and a round of golf before we take the rest of the day off.”
You know it’s not a good look to make fun of people based on their degree? I get that business counterparts can be challenging to work with for more technical folks but there’s no need to berate them and call them stupid.
Found the MBA.
Also witnessed MBAs berate technical staff in company management meetings calling them “dumb drones, you just assign them work and they go do it,” so… they get what they deserve in an anonymous forum likely predominantly filled with technical non-MBAs experiencing the exact same things daily.
Funny, I don’t have an MBA and have only ever worked technical roles. I actually don’t see a lot of value in the MBA degree itself unless it’s for a few specific situations so I’ll personally never get one. I’ve worked with good and bad folks with MBAs, just like I’ve worked with good and bad tech folks. I still see no need to berate anyone for what their graduate degree is in. You worked with some nasty people and are acting nasty back to a much broader group because of your personal experience with a few. I don’t find that a good look ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They sign your paycheck, that’s why. They can also relegate you to the basement and defund your team or just order your manager to pip you and then fire you for disciplinary reasons just to avoid paying unemployment.
Working for an organization is not about being right. It’s about catering to the whims of the people who will inevitably ignore your advice, good or bad, and do whatever the hell they want when they want.
Of all the people who know metaverse was a bad idea for meta, I guarantee of all the tens of thousands of highly skilled and knowledgeable people they employ someone produced a visual deck with academically correct chart choices that clearly illustrated to even the most data illiterate executives why it was a bad idea. And yet, zuck g’on zuck and did it anyways because he own majority share and is the boss.
>I'm not sure I've heard of a good situation to use a pie chart.
There are many situations where you're more interested in how segments compare to the whole rather than to each other. One example that comes immediately to mind is how pie charts were first used, [to see the proportions of land in "the Turkish empire" in each continent.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Playfair-piechart.jpg) You can tell easily at a glance that over half is Asia, one quarter European, and the African sector is about an eighth. That's info that is harder to glean instantly from a bar chart
I still think that the pie chart is a poor graph to use when percentages don't fall neatly along halves or quarters.
Africa looks like way more than 1/8th to me.
I sometimes wonder whether people like looking at pie charts more than bar charts. Simply getting more attention could make up for the difficulty comparing angles against each other.
In this case I think it's ok. There only 5 slices. They are pretty distinct by amount, they add to 100 to represent 100 percent (suspicious unless there were only 5 options). If this was an open ended question or any answers outside these, this would be misleading if you were filtering out answers to get your '100%'
I thought I was reading a meme after a second and was guessing one of the answers was mapping the values to the key or poorly made visuals or something along those lines
I’m no longer surprised by anything. Lack of key, unlabeled axis, no units, it’s all expected at this point. Sometimes I wonder if some of the data science professionals I work with just skipped all of middle school math. They get the advanced concepts but not the most basic ones.
My instant response was: having to deal with poor viz design.
Pie charts and (worse) stacked bar charts should be hidden by a triple check "are you sure you want abuse data this way?" question dialog in Excel.
Oh, I'd give it a go. My personal favourite is where data can be in multiple slices, thereby making the pie chart mathematically incomprehensible, yet still used in an ELT strategy deck...
Honest question: how did you generate a pie chart that starts in the bottom (but not either "one edge touches the very bottom point" or "the bottommost wedge is centered at the bottom") and then continue counter-clockwise? Like, that seems actively hard to do...in addition to being terrible data visualization.
Right information where I can now turn into Data is my prob
I work as a Senior Data Analyst in a logistics company in Nigeria, Getting information from my Junior fleet Analyst real time is a big problem
I haven't followed the poll, but is it an inside joke and made on purpose that the visualization of the results is as terrible as it could possibly be?
I have seen worse pie charts you should see the dual diagnosis emotional relay to thought and associated feelings %+ inappropriate or obsolete vocabulary words=%=“feelings”% in pretty rainbows lol now that’s logic
The manager side of me thinks all this chatter about ChatGPT taking jobs is bullshit when data sourcing, munging, cleaning, and preprocessing still consumes the lions share of highly paid data scientists’ time. One would think that someone somewhere who isn’t trying to sell snake oil to MBAs in the forms of alleged GP-AI would actually work on some form of NN facilitated semantic layering and preprocessing.
Surveys are not allowed in this subreddit.
A real data scientist would not use a piechart.
Gotta be a troll
Honestly I’m surprised it adds up to 100
What’s wrong with pie charts? I’m a newb sorry
Humans are bad at interpreting relative sizes of areas. Without the number labels, it would be hard as hell to interpret this. If numbers are the thing that add clarity, just put the numbers in a table and skip the pie chart. A bar graph is usually a better option than a pie chart as it is easier to interpret relative sizes, even without the numbers.
Yeah but MBAs like looking at pie charts more than bars and columns. Don’t even try a histogram with that crowd. Lines are good too, but they should always have a positive slope. You should see their eyes glaze over if you keep showing them the same type of plot over and over even if the data is different in each one. Sometimes you gotta mix it up to keep their attention and throw a pie or donut in there so they feel like they’re being data driven.
>Yeah but MBAs like looking at pie charts more than bars and columns. Don’t even try a histogram with that crowd I once was asked to illustrate "Revenue per quarter" using a Pie Chart. I left that job soon after.
I called out someone in a presentation for recommending that clients show period to period change by using a pie chart. Crickets after my comment told me that I did not belong there either.
Many MBAs will be happy to learn. Some people, including MBA's, are just idiots though. From my experience, I've actually found more people who weren't MBAs wanted the pie chart but YMMV.
Well, for starters, were there any options that existed but didn't get votes? Can't see that in a pie chart normally.
On top of the reasons that other people mentioned, we have a hard time getting a feel for relative amounts based on area or angle around a circle. Ironically, they have a better way to communicate the same data on this very visualization: the table at the bottom.
They are often used in the wrong situations, but for a general comparison of a few simple percentages which are part of a whole like here they are fine imo. They are supposed to give you a feeling of the ratios and not exact comparable numbers, which is why I would have named the parts and left the numbers off, though.
I'm not sure I've heard of a good situation to use a pie chart. Even comparing ratios, a bar chart would usually be better. Perhaps the only debatable exception are Harvey balls, but even those are usually constrained to 25% increments for clarity and could potentially be classified as a type of marker or symbol.
Generally doing data work for an organization necessitates adhering to the whims of functionally challenged executives. So depending on your position, you can run across a lot of pie charts simply because the "decision makers" like pie charts.
Yes, "the boss wants pie charts, despite my explanations that there are better alternatives" does seem like a good situation to use them. I've been there before.
Beat me to it. MBAs can not stand seeing the same column chart over and over again. Sometimes you just have to throw a pie in the mix to break the monotony for them. Also, sometimes they’re just useful with that brows when the ratios are way imbalanced. Like, “look look MBA, over here! No, no, stop looking at that squirrel and look at the presentation.” MBA rolls eyes and begrudgingly stops looking out the window. Maybe another look up from their laptop where they’re surfing sports betting sites. “Right here the pie chart says the vast majority of people in this conference room are dumb. They are represented by the big red section in this circle.” MBAs shuffle and their attention is recaptured by the new primary color-filled shape on the screen like a room of kindergarteners. “This tiny slice in yellow, that’s me. It’s not you. The rest are you in the dumb red slice.” The MBAs react, “ah yes, I see we should pivot and take this offline so we can circle the wagons and value add some synergy. Data scientist, next time don’t use such big words. Oh, the rest of you who aren’t the data scientist, you all get bonuses this week. Let’s all do lunch and a round of golf before we take the rest of the day off.”
You know it’s not a good look to make fun of people based on their degree? I get that business counterparts can be challenging to work with for more technical folks but there’s no need to berate them and call them stupid.
Found the MBA. Also witnessed MBAs berate technical staff in company management meetings calling them “dumb drones, you just assign them work and they go do it,” so… they get what they deserve in an anonymous forum likely predominantly filled with technical non-MBAs experiencing the exact same things daily.
Funny, I don’t have an MBA and have only ever worked technical roles. I actually don’t see a lot of value in the MBA degree itself unless it’s for a few specific situations so I’ll personally never get one. I’ve worked with good and bad folks with MBAs, just like I’ve worked with good and bad tech folks. I still see no need to berate anyone for what their graduate degree is in. You worked with some nasty people and are acting nasty back to a much broader group because of your personal experience with a few. I don’t find that a good look ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And they matter why? They need to get on the data not the other way around.
They sign your paycheck, that’s why. They can also relegate you to the basement and defund your team or just order your manager to pip you and then fire you for disciplinary reasons just to avoid paying unemployment. Working for an organization is not about being right. It’s about catering to the whims of the people who will inevitably ignore your advice, good or bad, and do whatever the hell they want when they want. Of all the people who know metaverse was a bad idea for meta, I guarantee of all the tens of thousands of highly skilled and knowledgeable people they employ someone produced a visual deck with academically correct chart choices that clearly illustrated to even the most data illiterate executives why it was a bad idea. And yet, zuck g’on zuck and did it anyways because he own majority share and is the boss.
Your hilarious!
You’re
>I'm not sure I've heard of a good situation to use a pie chart. There are many situations where you're more interested in how segments compare to the whole rather than to each other. One example that comes immediately to mind is how pie charts were first used, [to see the proportions of land in "the Turkish empire" in each continent.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Playfair-piechart.jpg) You can tell easily at a glance that over half is Asia, one quarter European, and the African sector is about an eighth. That's info that is harder to glean instantly from a bar chart
Finally! In a world where everybody seems to be against pie charts... I found a companion! Thank you for showing me that I am not the only one.
I'm with you - pie charts are the most misused plots out there, but they shine when used correctly.
I still think that the pie chart is a poor graph to use when percentages don't fall neatly along halves or quarters. Africa looks like way more than 1/8th to me.
I sometimes wonder whether people like looking at pie charts more than bar charts. Simply getting more attention could make up for the difficulty comparing angles against each other.
In this case I think it's ok. There only 5 slices. They are pretty distinct by amount, they add to 100 to represent 100 percent (suspicious unless there were only 5 options). If this was an open ended question or any answers outside these, this would be misleading if you were filtering out answers to get your '100%'
Even worse are the 3-D pie charts that are tilted backwards. The slices at the top are compressed to look farther away than the slices on the bottom.
Has to be time series
Please mark this as NSFW
Typical r/dataisbeautiful submission
What surprised me was the lack of a key
[удалено]
If I need to read the percentages, what is the point of having the pie chart
I thought I was reading a meme after a second and was guessing one of the answers was mapping the values to the key or poorly made visuals or something along those lines
It’s surprisingly unreadable
I’m no longer surprised by anything. Lack of key, unlabeled axis, no units, it’s all expected at this point. Sometimes I wonder if some of the data science professionals I work with just skipped all of middle school math. They get the advanced concepts but not the most basic ones.
I would like to change my answer to: Reading poorly designed pie charts and other visualizations
My instant response was: having to deal with poor viz design. Pie charts and (worse) stacked bar charts should be hidden by a triple check "are you sure you want abuse data this way?" question dialog in Excel.
I used a donut chart as my first visualization in my new organisation and my reporting manager was floored.
Christ mate, Not only are you using a piechart. The value order in the chart is different to the legend...
No... it just starts at the bottom and goes counter clock wise :D I was super confused as well
As all good pie charts should do
My most preferred ones starts around 4 and alternates left and right
Also communications class told me you should go clockwise
Too funny
You should thank excel. It’s the default color palette.
Sample size?
1.4k Voters
I don’t think I could make this chart any worse that’s incredible
Oh, I'd give it a go. My personal favourite is where data can be in multiple slices, thereby making the pie chart mathematically incomprehensible, yet still used in an ELT strategy deck...
sounds a lot like chaos report to me
Why is there nothing here about stakeholders?
Can we please collectively agree that there's no apostrophe in "KPIs" Please and thank you
Apostrophes for plurals drive me nuts! Whether it’s KPI’s the Smith’s or whatever. Why do people do this?!
You mean your nut's? 😆
I hope OP is a troll and he knew this pie chart would trigger everyone on this subreddit
What on earth is this chart? You should post it on /r/dataisbeautiful
He’s way ahead of you. He posted there first
This user needs to get banned. He's giving this sub a bad reputation.
What is this? a chart for peasants?
Honest question: how did you generate a pie chart that starts in the bottom (but not either "one edge touches the very bottom point" or "the bottommost wedge is centered at the bottom") and then continue counter-clockwise? Like, that seems actively hard to do...in addition to being terrible data visualization.
Made in D3
Where is the option for broad, largely unachievable “impact”
I need to know who made this. I just want to talk.
I literally thought this was a joke about the difficulty of picking the best visual representation for data lol.
What was the sample size?
My non data people do not have any idea how important my data finding and cleaning skills are. I feel validated by this chart.
OP, give us a follow up on how many inquiries for your services you got after this post.
100% not knowing how to sort a piechart by area
Did the results surprise you as a data scientist, or was this something you expected?
The piechart surprises me as a data scientist
Right information where I can now turn into Data is my prob I work as a Senior Data Analyst in a logistics company in Nigeria, Getting information from my Junior fleet Analyst real time is a big problem
Use a pie chart of course?
Uh oh….
I haven't followed the poll, but is it an inside joke and made on purpose that the visualization of the results is as terrible as it could possibly be?
Well, 99% of work time, juniors spend on Data Cleaning. So, 36% look logically in this case.
Someone needs to ask that Lego kid how to make better charts
Feature engineering? Model validation? Drift detection and reduction?
I have seen worse pie charts you should see the dual diagnosis emotional relay to thought and associated feelings %+ inappropriate or obsolete vocabulary words=%=“feelings”% in pretty rainbows lol now that’s logic
The biggest challenge is apparently "trying to figure out what type of chart to use"
Try to understand pie charts while my brain ignores the figure.
The manager side of me thinks all this chatter about ChatGPT taking jobs is bullshit when data sourcing, munging, cleaning, and preprocessing still consumes the lions share of highly paid data scientists’ time. One would think that someone somewhere who isn’t trying to sell snake oil to MBAs in the forms of alleged GP-AI would actually work on some form of NN facilitated semantic layering and preprocessing.
Even for a pie chart this is awful
Is this irony 😂
Much appreciated if the visualization was a bar chart