Save the Pies for Dessert by Stephen Few.
A paper on pie charts and why they are mis-leading.
I encountered this quite by accident but it is quite good. It illustrated quite well why pie charts should not be your first choice if you want to communicate effectively.
Something I assume to be a goal of all topic map interface designers, that is to communicated effectively.
From the paper:
Not long ago I received an email from a colleague who keeps watch on business intelligence vendors and rates their products. She was puzzled that a particular product that I happen to like did not support pie charts, a feature that she assumed was basic and indispensable. Because of previous discussions between us, when I pointed out ineffective graphing practices that are popular in many BI products, she wondered if there might also be a problem with pie charts. Could this vendor’s omission of pie charts be intentional and justified? I explained that this was indeed the case, and praised the vendor’s design team for their good sense.
After reading the paper I think you will pause before including pie charts capabilities in your topic map interface.
Thank you for sharing this! I knew about Few’s dislike of pie charts but I hadn’t yet come across the source material.
That said, I think these pie charts are fairly effective:
http://occupygeorge.com/#dollar-2
… but mostly because you only have to compare two slices.
Comment by marijane — November 7, 2011 @ 8:20 pm
Marijane,
Hmmm, maybe you could call that “dimension reduction?” Not how the term is usually used but it would fit.
Would be interesting to see if there are “offensive” uses of pie charts that represent the “other” sides position, accurately but using a pie chart that makes it confusing.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — November 10, 2011 @ 4:32 pm