How are employees distributed among a company’s departments? How many employees work remotely vs on-site? When our business loses sales, how are the “wins” distributed among our top five competitors? What percentage of all votes were cast for each candidate in an election?Ī pie chart’s greatest strength is how compactly and simply it can convey its idea. It’s ideal for communicating the composition of data. It’s an attempt to convert a table of data into a memorable idea by using a circle - the “pie” - divided into sections, or slices. What Is a Pie Chart?Ī pie chart is a circular, graphical representation of data. Knowing those limits will help you become a better communicator and presenter. The answer, of course, is that pie charts can, and do, play an important role in effective communication - in fact, one early use of pie charts helped expand human life expectancy by 50%.

But is Professor Tufte right? Can the ubiquitous pie chart really be that bad? And is there anything a pie chart can do that a bar chart or line chart can’t do better?

His 1983 book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,” has long been held as a gold-standard reference for excellent communication.

“The only worse design than a pie chart is several of them,” says Edward Tufte, noted statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics and computer science at Yale University. East, Nordics and Other Regions (opens in new tab)

Create pie chart in excel for expenses