English, Math B.Ed

1. PIE CHARTS
SONAL BHARAL
F.Y.B.ED

2. What do you think of when you hear the word 'pie?' You more than likely think of the delicious dessert with a
flaky crust and the filling of your choice. A 'pie' is certainly different than a 'pie chart,' although, oddly enough,
both can be divided up into slices.
A pie chart displays data, information, and statistics in an easy-to-read 'pie-slice' format with varying slice sizes
telling you how much of one data element exists. The bigger the slice, the more of that particular data was
gathered.
Let's take, for example, the pie chart shown below. It represents the percentage of people who own various
pets. As you can see, the 'dog ownership' slice is by far the largest, which means that most people represented
in this chart own a dog as opposed to a cat, fish, or other animal.
What Is a Pie Chart?

3. The main use of a pie chart is to show comparison. When items are presented on a pie chart, you can easily
see which item is the most popular and which is the least popular.
Various applications of pie charts can be found in business, school, and at home.
For business, pie charts can be used to show the success or failure of certain products or services.
They can also be used to show market reach of a business compared to similar businesses.
At school, pie chart applications include showing how much time is allotted to each subject.
It can also be used to show the number of girls to boys in various classes.
At home, pie charts can be useful when figuring out your diet.
You can also use pie charts to see how much money you spend in different areas.
There are many applications of pie charts and all are designed to help you to easily grasp a bunch of
information visually.
Uses of a Pie Chart

4. A pie chart is best used when trying to work out the composition of something. If you have categorical data
then using a pie chart would work really well as each slice can represent a different category. A good
example of a pie chart can be seen below.
Another good use for a pie chart would be to compare areas of growth within a business such as turnover,
profit and exposure.
A pie chart is a circular graph that is broken down into segments (i.e slices of pie). These segments
represent each category's contribution to display parts of a whole. So if your data does not represent this
then you should choose another chart. Also when there are similar sized categories, it can be difficult to
interpret, so keep that in mind. Although they are very aesthetically pleasing and easy interpret and very
powerful.
When to use a Pie Chart

5. 1. On a pie chart , although the axis is not apparent, it does have one. It is in fact the perimeter of the circle
that serves as the axis.
2. A pie chart only really works well when you only have one set of data.
3. If this is the case then you should stay clear of a pie chart as each segment is equal to its value then when
totaled equal to the whole, so using negative values can be rather confusing.
4. Useful for displaying data that is classified into nominal or ordinal categories. Generally used to show
percentage or proportional data. Try not use any zero values, as they cannot be represented.
5. It is best practice to never have any more than 7 categories as it becomes harder for the eye to distinguish
relativity of size between each section.
Tips to be considered

6. 1. Reading a pie chart is as easy as figuring out which slice of an actual pie is the biggest.
2. Usually, you have several bits of data, and each is pictured on the pie chart as a pie slice.
3. You will see that some data have larger slices than others.
4. So you can easily decipher which data is more important to your audience than others.
How to read a Pie Chart