This month’s Storytelling with Data challenge is to find a good use for a pie chart. This is not my favorite chart type, but I do believe it can tell a story when done right.
When to Make Pie (Charts)
Pie charts have become infamous in the data viz community and have largely been replaced with other visualization types. However, there are still some situations where a pie chart can convey data insights better than a data table without all the challenges pie charts were known for in the past.
This depends on 1) the data set and 2) the design of the chart.
Start with an Appropriate Data Set
The data set should have only 2 or 3 categories or be able to be grouped into 2 or 3 categories. By doing so you can reduce the issue of a pie chart becoming cluttered with too many pieces.
In addition, it’s ideal if the slices align with easily recognizable angles such as 25%, 33%, 50%, etc. Generally, people are not good at estimating angles, especially when there are many similarly sized slices of the pie.
Mix in Strategic Design
To make the most of a pie chart you want to use color intentionally and label the slices directly.
Using color intentionally could look like identifying the pie slice that is the most important to you, putting that in a bold color, and putting the other slice(s) in a gray. The colored slice will draw the reader’s attention and the gray slice(s) will slide into the background.
Label the slices directly by putting the data label and percentage within the pie, if they fit, or right next to the relevant slice. This eliminates the need for a legend, which just adds an unnecessary mental load for people as they scan between the legend and the chart to understand what each slice represents.
Serve with Quarantine Blues
I used data from the most recent Household Pulse Survey (Week 12) conducted by the United States Census Bureau. The surveys were sent to a sample of Americans each week for 12 weeks asking about their food security, employment status, healthcare access, housing status, home-based education activities, stimulus payment usage, and mental health.
I focused on the mental health question: “Over the last 7 days, how frequently have you felt down, depressed, or hopeless?”
I included in my analysis only on the people that responded to the question and grouped together the people that responded “Not at all” and “Several days” so that I would only have three categories or slices in my pie. I was most interested in the extreme responses, so I kept those separate.
Here is the pie chart I created:
