

Pie charts have a fairly narrow use-case that is encapsulated particularly well by its definition.

The annotations in the upper right give us a more precise judgment of the proportions, but the pie chart tells the overarching story of where the votes fell. Chu (yellow) is in second, with about a third of the votes, while Williams (purple) is last, with about a fifth of the votes. We can see that Reyes, represented by the first blue slice, has just less than half of the votes. The pie chart above depicts the distribution of votes for a fictional election for a small city. Each categorical value corresponds with a single slice of the circle, and the size of each slice (both in area and arc length) indicates what proportion of the whole each category level takes. What is a pie chart?Ī pie chart shows how a total amount is divided between levels of a categorical variable as a circle divided into radial slices. In this article, you will learn how to best use this frequently-misused chart type.

Despite often being maligned, the pie chart remains a very commonly-seen chart type.
