Save the Pie for Dessert
It’s July 2nd, which means 85% of your American colleagues are “working remotely,” which in practice means their laptops are open while they argue about who forgot to buy charcoal.
So it feels like the perfect week to talk about something equally overused and underperforming: pie charts.
You know, those colorful disks everyone loves to slap into PowerPoint, convinced they’re communicating insight when all they’re really doing is communicating “I didn’t think very hard about this.”
Here’s why pie charts suck:
-
Humans are terrible at comparing angles.
You think you can eyeball which slice is bigger when the numbers are close? You can’t. -
They collapse when you have more than a few categories.
Five slices? Now it’s a rainbow pizza of confusion. -
They tempt people to use them for non-categorical data.
Nothing says “data amateur hour” like showing ordered, structured data in a pie. - They distract you with decoration instead of clarity.
“Save the pies for dessert.”
Here’s an example.
- Can you tell at a glance whether Grilled Meat is bigger or smaller than Fireworks? (Answer: You’d have to squint or read labels—whereas a bar chart would show it instantly.)
- Is Vacation Planning twice as popular as Thinking About Work? Or only about 50% bigger?(Answer: Good luck figuring that out without the exact numbers.)
- How much bigger is Watching Baseball than Thinking About Work? (Answer: Your eyes can’t judge that angle precisely.)
- If I showed you this same chart again next week with the slices slightly shifted, would you notice any change at all? (Answer: Probably not—because pie charts are terrible for seeing trends over time.)
Yet people keep reaching for pies because they look friendly and familiar but just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s good.
The same could be said about many 4th of July side dishes. So this week, while everyone is half-checked-out anyway, do yourself a favor: Delete the pie chart.
Save them for dessert.
Kevin
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