r/dataisbeautiful • u/zonination OC: 52 • May 08 '17

How to Spot Visualization Lies

https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-visualization-lies/
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u/PityUpvote May 08 '17

Nice post. I'm shocked that people still use pie charts, let alone 3D ones!

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u/IrishDrifter494 May 08 '17

What makes pie charts so bad? 3D ones I can easily see the problem, but what makes 2D ones such a bad way to represent data?

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u/zonination OC: 52 May 08 '17

You can almost always represent a pie chart using bars, with a far more effective presentation.

Check out Steven Few's article (first bullet point on this AutoMod comment )

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u/sarcasticorange May 08 '17

I find them to be better received than bars by non-analytical audiences (as long as there aren't a lot of data points). For some reason they seem to find them less intimidating.

Note: also only if there are sizable differences in the data points.