Hide information with a Piechart?

Hide information with a Piechart?

Posted May 26, 2006 17:48 UTC (Fri) by amazingblair (subscriber, #2789)
In reply to: Piechart reference a joke? by ber
Parent article: Coming soon: GnuCash 2.0

ber,

I must disagree with your contention that piecharts are only used to hide information. Piecharts are used to emphasize one aspect of the underlying data, specifically, the proportion of the parts compared to the whole; how big a slice of the pie. It is well suited to that task.

However, by definition you cannot emphasize one aspect without de-emphasizing others: in the case of the piechart, you lose sight of the quantities by focusing on the proportions. Is this perhaps what you mean by "hiding information"? That is a specious objection, since the pie chart does not replace the numbers, it merely summarizes on easpect of them. Nothing stops you from supplying another chart of another type that summarizes another aspect of the data if you seek further clarity.

As I state in another comment further down, the numbers are for detail, the chart is the overview.

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