The other day I had to make some graphs about revenues and profits of a set of companies. While doing it I wanted to use bar chart with bars of profit and revenue overlapping. But when I mentioned the revenue as 3000 and profit as 1500, the graph would show up something like this. As you can see the totals are adding up to 4500 where as the company is making only 3000.
I thought changing the revenue figures to revenue-profit would solve the problem. It did solve the bar height problem, but it did create a new problem. Now the revenue is represented as 1500 instead of actual number 1500.
I think this is a pretty common usage of charts, so I am sharing a work around (not really, but I would like to show off) for this. Remove the data labels for the series 2 (revenue). Add a new data series with actual revenue values to the chart (right click, ‘source data’->’add series’). Now this new series would be stacked on the top of profit, revenue-profit values. Just set the background and border property for this to ‘none’ and set the data-labels for ‘values’. Adjust the alignment to ‘Inside bar-base’ and you have something like this.
Oh, you might want to re adjust the axis scale to original one in case its screwed up because of the new series. Happy visualization.
14 Responses to “Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability”
I think the virtue of pie charts is precisely that they are difficult to decode. In many contexts, you have to release information but you don't want the relationship between values to jump at your reader. That's when pie charts are most useful.
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Chandoo,
millions of ants cannot be mistaken.....There should be a reason why everybody continues using Pie charts, despite what gurus like you or Jon and others say.
one reason could be because we are just used to, so that's what we need to change, the "comfort zone"...
i absolutely agree, since I've been "converted", I just find out that bar charts are clearer, and nicer to the view...
Regards,
Martin
[...] says we can Group Smaller Slices in Pie Charts to Improve Readability. Such a pie has too many labels to fit into a tight space, so you need ro move the labels around [...]
Chandoo -
You ask "Can I use an alternative to pie chart?"
I answer in You Say “Pie”, I Say “Bar”.
This visualization was created because it was easy to print before computers. In this day and age, it should not exist.
I think the 100% Bar Chart is just as useless/unreadable as Pies - we should rename them something like Mama's Strudel Charts - how big a slice would you like, Dear?
My money's with Jon on this topic.
The primary function of any pie chart with more than 2 or 3 data points is to obfuscate. But maybe that is the main purpose, as @Jerome suggests...
@Jerome.. Good point. Also sometimes, there is just no relationship at all.
@Martin... Organized religion is finding it tough to get converts even after 2000+ years of struggle. Jon, Stephen, countless others (and me) are a small army, it would take atleast 5000 more years before pie charts vanish... patience and good to have you here 🙂
@Jon .. very well done sir, very well done.
good points every one...
I've got to throw my vote into Jon's camp (which is also Stephen Few's camp) -- bars just tend to work better. One observation about when we say "what people are used to." There are two distinct groups here (depending on the situation, a person can fall in either one): the person who *creates* the chart and the person who *consumes* the chart. Granted, the consumers are "used to" pie charts. But, it's not like a bar chart is something they would struggle to understand or that would require explanation (like sparklines and bullet graphs). Chart consumers are "used to" consuming whatever is put in front of them. Chart creators, on the other hand, may be "used to" creating pie charts, but that isn't an excuse for them to continue to do so -- many people are used to driving without a seatbelt, leaving lights on in their house needlessly, and forwarding not-all-that-funny anecdotes via email. That doesn't mean the practice shouldn't be discouraged!
[...] example that Chandoo used recently is counting uses of words. Clearly, there are other meanings of “bar” (take bar mitzvah or bar none, for [...]
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Good article. Is it possible to do that with line charts?
Hi,
Is this available in excel 2013?