Lesson: Part-to-Whole Relationships Beyond Pie Charts
As discussed in the previous lesson, pie charts are sometimes good at representing part-to-whole relationships — but they’re not the only option. Charts that show the pieces of something larger are called composition charts or proportion charts, because they show how a large category is composed of smaller subcategories. Today we’ll look at other options beyond pie charts.
Follow along with the slides here (second half): All About Pie Charts
Video not showing up? Watch on YouTube here.
Readings
• Visualizing Proportions
Discussion
There are so many good and bad pie charts out there, so we’re going to collect some more examples.
Pie Chart Examples: Find an example of a pie chart that relates to a topic that interests you. It can be serious or lighthearted.
- Where did you find the example and what does it show?
- Do you think it meets the criteria for being a good pie chart?
- If you had to choose a different chart type for this information, what would you choose?
- Include the image embedded in your discussion post so everyone can easily view it.
Assignment 10: Athletics Expenses
In this assignment, you’ll get more practice in Tableau by creating two different charts that show the same data. The dataset is WSU Athletics game-day expenses for each team, and this is intended as more independent practice in Tableau as well as making choices about chart types, colors and text.