I have never seen a pie chart sliced like this one (describing the sexual and racial composition of the American population). I don't see any advantage over radial wedges, unless its to enable placement of the segment labels within the diagram, and I find it hard to compare the size of irregular polyhedrons.
A quick search led me to "11 pie chart alternatives and when to use them," which didn't include this pattern exactly, unless its a type of Voronai diagram.
Posting this because the readership here has a huge range of knowledge and skills, so perhaps someone can offer an informed comment.
If nothing else, the search at least led me to this old Dilbert cartoon:
Yikes! We could get that information from the percentage numbers... if they had actually included numbers in all the fields.
ReplyDeleteThis is what you get when you order a graphic designer that doesn't understand numbers make a pie chart. Presumably in a really short turn around.
ReplyDeleteOr if you ask an AI to do so.
So many things done right. Color, labeling, highlighting, pleasing visual. And yet it's useless.
I mean compare this to a phrase like: "The composition of the US population is a% white women, b% Black men, c% Hispanic women, d% white men, e% other men, f% etc. "
Data presentation matters. When done right, it seems so intuitive. It is not.
I agree. And this was in the Washington Post. Your suggestion that maybe AI is the culprit is an interesting thought.
DeleteIt's terrible as a way to visualize and compare different populations, but I'm guessing it was their best option for being able to label them within their own regions using horizontally-aligned text.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, the context for this graph is the text right above it in the article: "In other words, if Trump sheds White female supporters out of concern over, say, mockery of making menstrual products available to students — so what? There are Hispanic and Black men who come on board. (If you’ll forgive the sanitizing of Gaetz’s cringey formulation.) / The problem with that is that there are a lot more White women than Black or Hispanic men. Analysis of 2023 Census Bureau data suggests that there are nearly twice as many, in fact."
ReplyDeleteThe graph sections with percentages are the only ones needed to make their point. Granted, they could have done way better than this, but it does make their point (albeit without any additional context).
I think they asked a mathematician. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd9UZSodeN8
ReplyDeleteIt does work in the context of the writing which compares white women votes to Black and Hispanic men votes. But I question them thinking that any of those blocks thinks or votes all the same way.
ReplyDeleteBut just looking at it, even with the text, leaves a hunger for the rest of the numbers.
xoxoxoBruce
It's not really a pie chart. Just a circle divided up by area. If it were a rectangle with subrectangles, you might not notice at all. They're just highlighting the three percentages from the article.
ReplyDeleteI agree, this isn't a pie chart. I was thinking of comparing circles of varying sizes to compare/contrast the different categories, but rectangles/subrectangles probably works better. Or they could have just used a dang pie chart. :-) Still, the fact that they did something different is irritating, but drew a lot more attention to the chart than if they had done something more standard.
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