Be Excellent To Each Other

Interesting point... do you use pies?

https://blog.funnel.io/why-we-dont-use- ... alizations

Pie charts are fucking awful. I hate them.

Yes, I've become quite zealous on not using them, and preaching the good word to others when I've run training sessions.

They do in chippies.

I suppose many people use pie charts because they have the potential to look prettier than a bar chart, so making a presentation more attractive.

I never liked them either, but many times I used them because I assumed the audience could enjoy them more. Yes, i'm such a sell-out.

I think there's immediate value in a pie chart when there's an obvious visual impression of a distribution of a small number of categories, and the actual exact numbers don't matter that much.

For example, I have a reporting dashboard of our mobile users. On a summary stats page there is a pie chart showing the numbers of iOS vs Android devices. It's very obvious from that chart that we're around 1/3 Android and 2/3 iOS. Nobody looking at it gives a shit about the actual numbers, and the ability to visualise that split is much better than it would be in a bar chart.

So I maintain there are viable use-cases. Probably not many, but they exist.

In some of the dashboards we create within Dynamics 365, the customers literally just want to display a single number (number of appointments, orders etc), so we end up using pie charts for that, so it ends up with a solid circle with a number in the middle. Does the job I suppose.

I think another viable case for where they are best employed is when giving an immediate visual representation of a particular number in relation to the whole of the responder number. In that example of the favourite animals it’s easy to see the number of people who like zebras in relation to how many like giraffes in a bar chart, but not to see (visually, without referring to the numbers) how this looks in relation to the total number of people who prefer all the other animals.

Why not just display the number?

I've always thought of pie charts as being absolutely fine where it's useful to be able to easily visualise things as a proportion of the whole (what are my chances of running into an actual UKIP voter, that kind of thing). And that's usually where I've seen them used.

Craster in defending pies shocker.

With Dynamics dashboards, you can either list the data or display a chart, but sadly not just a big count. 'Interactive Service Hub' does do the big number stuff, but is generally a pain in the arse and is being deprecated anyway

There was a day when I found Pie Chart humour very funny. It was a slow day at work. Behold:

They were funny the first time, but do not appear to have stood the test of time well (also, I'm grumpy today).

I do like those. The pyramid one is very clever

Yes.

You left out the Mr T one.

Those are great, but my favourite is certainly Japan:D

I'd not seen that pyramid one before. It is good.

I disagree with that post and will use pie charts extensively, if not exclusively, from this moment on, simply out of spite.

Unless that was their intention, in which case I will use pie charts in moderation, out of anti-spite.

Also japan and pyramid: very good!

3D ones, natch.

With the slices separated in space so you really can't compare 'em.

Nice little charts.. i 'll steel them when write a blogpost about this:)

this had lead to the discussion i hoped for.. kudo to the forum..