Pies and Other Tasty Charts for Use
Sybil_D
Member ✭
Happy Pi Day!
In honor of Pi Day (3/14), I thought I'd share a small nifty post on a highly used graphical representation of part-to-whole relationships, Pie charts. Pie charts are widely used by many reporting analysts; for example, pretty nice graphic for a Tableau dashboard to show demographic breakdowns for healthcare product enrollments, right? Donut charts, like their pie cousins, show proportions but the center space can be reserved for including information, like totals.
Treemaps are also another way to show part-to-whole, and can help draw your eye to the parts that make up the majority of the whole. Keeping in line with the topic of pies, radial treemaps (a.k.a 'sunburst charts'; check out Bora Beran's post on the topic) offer you the ability to show hierarchy within your pie-like visual. Waffle charts (mmm, waffles! T'is breakfast time as I write this post), a.k.a grid plots, also provide another way to showcase percentages in a report.
Lucky for Tableau users, all these chart types are possible.
I don't have particular examples to share at the moment, but feel free to add to this post with your own. I will, however, share this really nice reference sheet from the Financial Times' Chart Doctor for the type of visual to use (not just part-to-whole relationships) to help you convey your data story with the right chart.
Happy Charting!
Comments
Thanks Sybil! This was really interesting and useful. I really like the chart that references the proper time to implement each chart type!