Posted by Andy on 5/24/2007, 10:02 am, in reply to "Simple share of total" Research on the subject is mixed. Cleveland and McGill (1984) found that pie charts not very effective because people have a harder time judging angles than they do either position or length, and Jarvenpaa and Dickson (1988) concluded that horizontal bar charts are more effective for showing parts of a whole than either pies or cumulative (stacked) column charts. On the other hand, Spence and Lewandowsky (1991) found that pie charts are more effective when the viewer has to mentally add two or more components together, perhaps because when these components are adjacent in a pie chart, they can be read as a single component.
Message modified by board administrator 5/24/2007, 10:37 am
Pie charts tend to be the most popular choice for showing simple share of total, although they have been criticized (e.g. by Tufte). 
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