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Learn about pie charts, and where they are useful for visualizing data.
Example Excel Spreadsheet
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Pie charts are kinda funny to me.
0:00
On the one hand, they're one of the first
charts I was ever exposed to in school.
0:01
They are simple and easy to understand.
0:06
On the other hand, the story told
by a pie chart often would be told
0:08
just as well if not more
clearly by a column chart.
0:13
That said, pie charts are great for
0:16
showing the sum of parts at
a particular point in time.
0:18
You have 24 hours in a day,
how did you spend it?
0:21
You consumed 18,000 calories of food and
beverages last week,
0:25
how did that break out?
0:29
We wrote 100 jokes during our meeting,
what types?
0:30
A pie chart is a good way to
show a snapshot allocation.
0:34
They are not great for
showing changes over time.
0:37
One data scientist I know jokingly said
about pie charts, don't ever use them.
0:41
I think that's a bit extreme, but
again, just remember to ask yourself,
0:47
am I telling the story more clearly
with this chart than another option?
0:51
If the answer is no, then don't use it.
0:58
If the answer is, they're both the same,
then exercise your freedom to choose.
0:59
One industry that you tend to see a lot
of pie charts in is wealth management.
1:04
Financial advisors will use pie charts to
show how an investment portfolio has been
1:08
allocated across different asset
classes or investment strategies.
1:13
This is because they're showing how
all your invested wealth, the pie,
1:17
is being split up and allocated.
1:22
Here we are, looking at a simple
dataset of salary information for
1:25
one of our competitors.
1:29
Just kidding, it's made up data.
1:32
But anyhow,
let's make a pie chart out of it.
1:33
So again,
I'm gonna select the data I wanna chart.
1:37
I'm going to use a keyboard shortcut.
1:41
ALT N and the shortcut for
a pie chart is Q, 2D is what I want.
1:43
And voila, we have our pie chart.
1:52
So you can see our biggest
salary expense is in sales,
1:57
then marketing, then product.
2:02
We could rearrange the data series to go
from largest to smallest to make that more
2:07
clear, but I'm gonna skip that for now and
2:11
wanna call out what happens
when we mouse over the chart.
2:14
See you can see the series name,
but then for the pie chart,
2:17
it also shows us the percent of total
value along with the value itself.
2:21
I think that's where a pie
chart can be more valuable,
2:26
if you show the percent of total
values along with the chart.
2:30
So let's add some data labels.
2:34
I want to right click on the chart,
add data labels.
2:36
Right now, it's just showing
us the nominal values for
2:43
those different data series,
but I can go down here and
2:47
format the data labels and
check this percentage box.
2:51
And I could deselect the values,
and there we go.
2:56
Remember though, it all depends on
the story you're trying to tell.
3:00
If the percent of total isn't really
important, and you're wanting to see
3:04
the relative value of how much
is being spent on each division,
3:09
I'd argue that a column chart tells that
story more clearly than a pie chart.
3:13
So let's change this
back to a column chart.
3:18
Here, we can clearly
see the relative value.
3:24
Sales is by far the highest and
Admin the lowest.
3:27
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