Pie chart does not adjust itself if the slices are many

Hi Pushpal,

I hope all is well,

I have recently touched on this issue with yourself in a previous case, of which I can only put this behaviour down to the fact of how much data is within the Pie Chart itself, as large amounts added will cause mass amounts of labels/lines etc.

Have you looked into how this would look when making the chart larger within the canvas side for multi-charts?

I look forward to your reply with your views on this.

Regards,

Mark

Hi Pushpal,

Firstly I agree with Mark's comment. The clutter and low readability you are experiencing with the pie chart you have created is more a consequence of the nature of a pie chart, especially one representing a large number of categories, rather that a deficiency of Yellowfin (i.e. almost all data visualisation tools would struggle to present a readable pie chart with a large number of segments).

An alternative solution to your problem would be to present the data in the form of a horizontal bar chart with the bar order based on descending order of magnitude (i.e. longest bar at the top and smallest bar at the bottom). My reason for suggesting this alternative is that data visualisation best practice principals consider a pie chart a very poor method of graphically representing part-of-whole relationships. Research has shown the accurate interpretation of pie charts is consistently low (i.e. ~40% of the time the reader of a pie chart will misinterpret the data displayed in the chart). The primary reason for this is human visual perception is not being good at differentiating between different sized segments in a circle, particularly when the sizes of the segments are similar or there are many small segments.

If for space constraints reasons you find it is not possible to use a horizontal bar chart a just acceptable fall back is a ring or doughnut chart, but ensure there are only 3 or 4 segments on display. If you do have many categories in the underlying data I would suggest combine all categories small than the top three into a single "Other" category.

If you want to learn more about why pie charts are not a good form of data visualisation I suggest you read:

• Save the Pies for Dessert by Stephen Few - http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/save_the_pies_for_dessert.pdf

Thanks Team !!

Hi Pushpal,

I know it has been some time since this issue was last looked at, but I just want to touch base and question whether or not the advice giving from myself and Steve (thank you) was helpful? I look forward to your reply.

Regards,

Mark