> I had to google to find some arguments against pie charts
Can you give me any arguments for pie charts? I also disagree with that article that the best alternative to a pie chart is a bar chart.
Whenever your doing any sort of data visualization you should always ask "How does this representation convey information that cannot be represented in a table?"
Can you provide an example where a pie chart would tell you more than could be conveyed in a table?
Tables are incredibly information dense, have an unambiguous ordering and can easily scale to expressing 5-6 dimensions of information in the exact same space that a pie-chart can convey. Tables are limited in that they work best when representing a very small number of observations, but pie-charts and bar-charts share this same problem without any of the benefits of tables.
If a table won't cut it, then you probably have enough data that a scatter plot is your best choice. Scatter plots also can easily handle an extra 2-3 dimensions (color, scale, and shape) of information.
Can you give me any arguments for pie charts? I also disagree with that article that the best alternative to a pie chart is a bar chart.
Whenever your doing any sort of data visualization you should always ask "How does this representation convey information that cannot be represented in a table?"
Can you provide an example where a pie chart would tell you more than could be conveyed in a table?
Tables are incredibly information dense, have an unambiguous ordering and can easily scale to expressing 5-6 dimensions of information in the exact same space that a pie-chart can convey. Tables are limited in that they work best when representing a very small number of observations, but pie-charts and bar-charts share this same problem without any of the benefits of tables.
If a table won't cut it, then you probably have enough data that a scatter plot is your best choice. Scatter plots also can easily handle an extra 2-3 dimensions (color, scale, and shape) of information.