Pie Chart - Everything about Pie Graphs

What is Pie Chart?

All of you I am sure in your school days would have heard about the pie chart. If not, here is the answer to what is a pie chart. A pie chart is a circular chart displaying data, statistics, and information. It is divided into different sectors that appear like wedges showing proportions. The varying ratios will tell you how much of a single data exists. The bigger the size, the more is the gathered data. The whole pie shows 100% of a whole, and the pie slices are the portions of this whole.

Source: https://www.meta-chart.com/pie

With a pie chart, it is easy to understand the size of the portions. Pie charts are useful in business and educational purposes. You can use it to show segments of populations, expenses, and survey answers.

History of Pie Chart

Pie charts came into existence about 200 years ago. William Playfair, a Scottish writer in the year 1801 who strongly believed in appealing to the human eye for magnitude and proportion invented pie chart. According to him, this is an easy and unique method to convey an idea.

He first invented a pie chart for comparing geopolitical territories which were represented by circles and at times segmented slices as seen in the Turkish Empire. However, his invention got lost until Charles Joseph Minard, the civil engineer from France in the year 1858 used a circle-divided map. It displayed the proportions, and the amounts of the meat supplied to the market.

During the same time, an English nurse, Florence Nightingale, the statistician, and social reformer, used the polar area diagram for showing the dynamics of causes of death in the British Army. Every segment had uniform angles and will vary with the length of the radius from the circles center.

Why Need A Pie Chart?

You need a pie chart primarily for displaying comparison. When elements get represented this way, you can see the most and least popular aspect. It has different applications in business, home, and schools.

When it comes to a business, you can use it for showing the failure or success of a product or service. Also, you can use it for showing the market reach of a business in comparison to the others. In school, a pie chart gets used for showing the number of boys or girls in each class or the success of students in different subjects. At home, it proves to help plan a diet. Another good use of a pie chart at home is to determine how much you will be able to spend on different things.

Therefore, the advantages of pie charts can be summarized as below：

Pie Chart VS Bar Chart

Pie charts and bar charts are the two most used charts for brochures, presentations, websites, newspapers, and magazines for improving the visual effects. However, these two are different from each other. Let’s see how.

Source: www.infragistics.com

Comparison Between Pie Chart and Bar Chart

Pie Chart VS Doughnut Chart

If you see the pie chart examples, you will see that like them, doughnut charts have data arranged in a ring. Each data series serves as a ring. Unlike pie charts, these have over one data series. If the puzzle of what is pie chart and what is a doughnut chart troubling you, check out the differences.

Source: www.limesurvey.org

Pros & Cons of Pie Charts and Doughnut Charts

Pie Chart Examples

Basic Pie Chart

First up is the basic pie chart. It is a simple diagram that looks like a pie divided into slices. These slices show the percentage or proportions contributing to the total.

Source: www.mathsisfun.com

Pie chart example for the basic type given above that tells the students grades in the form of slices.

Comparative Pie Charts

The second pie chart example is the comparative pie charts wherein there are two pie charts used for comparing data.

Source: www.ieltsliz.com

For instance, a comparative pie chart given above shows the comparison of energy consumption in the year 1995 and 2005.

3D or Exploding Pie Charts

3D makes a pie chart attractive without altering the underlying data. It pulls out an individual slice, pulls the entire apart, or enlarges the entire section taking a bar of the pie chart. For emphasizing, you can move back the single slice from the remaining pie chart.

Source: www.peltiertech.com

For 3D or exploding pie chart, we have given a pie chart above that depicts the total sales of different brands like Apple, Blueberry, and so on.

How to make a pie chart with EdrawMax?

If you are not familiar with creating a pie chart, you don't have to worry as here is EdrawMax that will make drawing a pie chart easier for you.

Step 1: Go to the “File” menu and click on the “New” option. Select “Chart” option and choose “Pie Chart” template from the library.

Step 2: Now place the chart on the drawing screen and edit the shape as per your desire. From the library function on the left side, you can also change to different templates available for the pie chart.

Step 3: Feel free to set the fill style by selecting a category.

EdrawMax allows distinct features like:

Once you have created the pie chart, save it as a project file and export if needed.

Tips on Creating a Pie Chart Efficiently

Limitations of Pie Charts

In some cases, you shouldn’t or cannot use a pie chart. People who do not know what a pie chart is might make this mistake. Here are some of the instances when you should avoid using one.