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Why Pie Charts are Evil | Ataccama

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Pie charts were probably the second or third graph type your math teacher introduced to you. Maybe they even forced a protractor into your hand so you could get all the angles and percent ratios correct. Today, pie, donut, and gauge charts have been exiled from the data analytics and visualization community. Data experts rave about how they are “inadequate,” “bad,” or even “evil.” But why do pie charts have such a bad reputation these days? Let’s find out. Whenever visualizing data, you have limited space to work with. Either in the confines of a PowerPoint slide or as one step in your data story, you have to treat that precious digital real estate with care and fill it with the most value for the viewer/reader. The problem with Pie, Donut, and Gauge charts is that they use more space than alternatives that provide the same value (e.g., a bar chart). This is due to two reasons: the nature of their shape and how they depict information. Graphs are useful when a picture of the data makes

Pie charts were probably the second or third graph type your math teacher introduced to you right after bar graphs and line charts. Maybe they even forced a protractor into your hand so you could get all the angles and percent ratios correct. Today, pie, donut, and gauge charts have been exiled from the data analytics and visualization community. Data experts rave about how they are “inadequate,” “bad,” or even “evil.” But why do pie charts have such a bad reputation these days? Let’s find out. 1. Pie charts take up too much space Whenever visualizing data, you have limited space to work with.

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