New Video: The Science of Pie Charts

The common explanation for how pie charts work is that we read them by angle. That of course would mean that donut charts would be bad, because you can’t see the angle when you take away the center of the pie. Changing the radius of a slice wouldn’t matter though, because that doesn’t change the angle. But there is no evidence that angle is how we read pie charts, quite the opposite actually. In this new video, I walk through five reasons why angle is not how we read pies, and what that means for other things we like to assume about them.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve seen me talk about my pie chart papers. This video summarizes them in a way that I hope is interesting, informative, and entertaining. You can watch it below or over on YouTube (the latter is preferred so you can leave a comment, subscribe, etc.).

The video covers four different studies, which I’ve written about here before. In particular, I wrote a walk-through of the pie charts studies from the first couple of papers in 2016. I’m also covering the study I did using 3D pie charts as a way to distinguish between arc length and area in 2019. And if you think people hating pie charts is new, feast your eyes on the drama that unfolded after Eells’ paper was published in 1926.

As always, I’m curious to hear what you think! If you want to support the channel, please head over to YouTube to like the video and subscribe if you haven’t already. This is free of course, but it gives YouTube a signal to show the video to more people.

Also, my YouTube channel has been kindly shortlisted for a Data Literacy Award. If you enjoy my videos, please consider voting for me (and for other great folks in the other categories too!).