This made me think…
“There is a rare, legitimate purpose but they’re grossly overused and there is almost always a better option.” –Technichor on Reddit thread about budget spread sheets
- A pie chart takes up the space of a square (rectangular shape), but the corners are not used (wasted space).
- A stacked bar chart can display the same information, but in a cleaner format as the rectangular shape is filled.
- A circle covers 3.14 (π) “square units”. The rest — 0.86 “square units” — is just empty corners.
- A bar covers 4 full “square units”.
- 0.86 is about 21.5% of 4.
A pie chart wastes a fifth of the space that could otherwise be used for additional content.
- Show an example