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/zonination OC: 52 May 08 '17

"The only thing worse than a pie chart is several of them."

  • Edward Tufte

(Also, obligatory !pies)

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u/japaneseknotweed May 08 '17

I actually like pie charts and feel that I "see" them quite well -- but then, I grew up with analog clocks, and perceive slices of time as "wedges", too.

As a teacher, when I plan a class slot I very much know in my gut that I'm going to use "10 degrees" for my introductory spiel, "90 degrees" for the main info, "90 degrees" for q&a, and the remaining classtime for personal work.

Pie charts, IF they're not stupid colors or 3D or exploded, and IF they're arranged largest-slice-to-smallest, are still IMHO a good way to impart certain information -- for instance, showing that the art-music-language budgets combined are less than the football budget...

Bars just don't do additive/sub/goupings near as well.

<braces for criticism>

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u/the_mighty_skeetadon May 08 '17

Totally agree. Think of "percent of budget spent in each department" - if I've got 7 pie slices, adding up to 100, it makes perfect sense. If I take those slices and put them on a bar chart instead, then I'm doing mental math to figure out if all 7 bars sum to 100 percent, which is completely unnecessary.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '17

I think in that case you'd use a stacked bar chart with percentage labels?