Please … Please Stop Using Pie Charts

please, oh please, stop using pie charts. here's why.

0:00 Intro
1:00 Reason 1: Wasted Space
1:57 Reason 2: Curved Distances
3:13 Reason 3: Errors
4:37 Alternative 1: Bar Chart
8:00 Alternative 2: Donut Chart
9:22 Alternative 3: Stacked Bar Chart

[okoshtr]

the idead that pie charts waste 25% of space is something really good to know for my upcoming masterthesis when i need to somehow fill 80 pages 😅

[Set_Get]

__good discussion. thank you.
1. There are cases where no statistical comparison but a visual one is needed, say, you have a water catchment and you want to show the percentage under several landuses. here, a piechart works well. of course, this could be displayed by a stacked horizontal barchart as well. I personally find a piechart visually more pleasing in these cases.
2. if needed, error bars in stacked barcharts could be placed on upper or lower horizontal borders. however, i cannot recall a software to do this at least without some manipulation.
3. i would consider one use case where a piechart is prefered: where you need to discuss and put emphasis on a particular segment/arc, you can explode that segment only.

[moutonso]

I know this is a somewhat old video, but I think that the example you gave is actually a perfect COUNTER-example to your point. Indeed, if we are looking at votes, then what matters most of all are the following:
- Who has gotten the most votes -> can be read slightly more easily on a bar chart, but if the pie chart is sorted this is not a big problem)
- Have they gotten a majority of the votes, very important in parliamentary or runoff systems -> can be read much MUCH more easily on a pie chart, especially if the bar chart is denoted as # of votes and not percentage
- Do they have a large majority or small one -> pie chart again is much better at that

Now is it perfect? Absolutely not. But as a way to quickly get the gist of which parts are a significant part or majority of the whole, and which are negligible, it is a often a very appropriate choice.

[НиколайНовичков-еэ]

Thank you for video :) I've always used pie charts simply because it's convenient sometimes to fill an entire page in a document with it.

[MyMy-tvfd]

ah, but when I worked as an actual data scientist for an education services company (...remains nameless...), the boss loved pie charts simply because the padded reports out, expanded our role, and created an extra visual element of mumbo-jumbism. All sound reasons in the mind of a typical empire builder.

[ResilientFighter]

good data visualization best practices! think this was covered in storytelling with data.

[marcfruchtman]

None of that really matters too much if you sort the slices and put numbers either in the slice or on the edge. The "wasted" space issue is meaningless since it is generally not an issue to have some wasted space around a chart. Are they perfect, no... but certainly not worth an entire video devoted to why they shouldn't be used. (Hoping this video was more for fun and maybe you got bored).

[hppvideos]

I was already subscribed, this video made me subscribe even harder. #PieChartsSuck

[jasdeepsinghgrover]

I think this analysis is somewhat weak and naive(being honest) unlike other videos...

Pie-charts are actually not read through arc-lengths but rather through sector areas which are also proportional to angles like arc-lengths. (Solves problem 1)

Actually a lot of area in pie charts is not wasted. Most people put labels inside or along the circumference of the chart. Rather, bar charts are much more wasteful. Try representing an industry with 30 competitors on a bar chart and there will be no way you could compare any 2 of them. Pie chart is very useful in showing what's significant, comparable and insignificant.

Most use cases in Pie charts actually do not involve error bars. They generally come from well sampled data with very low errors. Error and distribution analysis is also done much better actually with violin plots.

The pie chart is also a very good tool for control. Like making the sectors clickable for more information.

The donut chart is actually not that useful in my opinion. The center actually shows the subtended angle which can be very helpful in fine comparisons like (12, 13) and we humans perceive areas much better than lengths.

[rahulprasad]

This seems like a "why Americans can't understand pie-charts"
Maybe advocate for better education in USA instead of clickbait titles. The wasted space point is meaningless. Pie chart is supposed to be used to give the crux of the data at a glance. Its not supposed to convey all the nuances and errors etc.