
Why Tufte Is Flat-Out Wrong about Pie Charts - tosh
http://speakingppt.com/2013/03/18/why-tufte-is-flat-out-wrong-about-pie-charts/
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benfle
The author is obviously more interested in telling entertaining stories (in
the boardroom) than telling the truth.

Tufte is not only about data viz. and powerpoint bashing. Integrity is central
to his work.

I would not trust someone who present me a graph like in the second example
(whether as a pie chart or as a bar chart). There is no way to know if the
classes have the same attendance. Hence his conclusions could be completely
wrong.

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Armisael16
I don't think I've seen such a collection of bad graphs in one article in a
long time. I think that every single one of those graphs could be done better
- which is really quite impressive.

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bjt
How would you improve them? (In the context of the boardroom presentations he
references.)

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Armisael16
The first dataset is so simple that no chart is appropriate. "Companies A and
B control two-thirds of the market". Big text. Done.

The second dataset could be done better with stacked bars (eg,
[https://i.imgur.com/oGzIKED.png](https://i.imgur.com/oGzIKED.png)). The
author seems to think stripping temporal data is a virtue here, for some
reason, when it clearly isn't.

The third dataset should be presented with a heatmap on a state (or county)
level, a la [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates-
united-...](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates-united-
states/)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Heatmaps on state and county levels are really difficult to get right.

For one thing, the dataset does not do a good job of conveying uncertainty,
specifically that caused by low-population counties. The second-highest
mortality rate county - Buffalo, South Dakota - has a population of 1,912
people, and the "City" which is the county seat is remarkably the least
populous county seat in the US with a population of 14. The various
mountainous locations (appearing to be mostly ski towns) in Colorado which top
the list of lowest-mortality counties have similarly low populations.

For another, size and population density are often misleading. That small,
orange blotch in the lower left? That's LA County, with a population greater
than the 10 lowest-population states combined (including such large areas as
Montana, North and South Dakota, Alaska). Information in these low-population
areas is over-represented, while the largest cities are under-represented.

I suppose those caveats are just something to be aware of. Because I don't
know of a good solution for to how to accurately and concisely convey this
sort of information.

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TYPE_FASTER
"Especially as pie charts become smaller, and you need to use a lot of them,
pie charts can communicate percentages much more quickly than bar graphs."

I'd prefer a heat map, instead of having to look at many little pie charts.

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Upvoter33
This article actually shows why Tufte is right, repeatedly, in some sort of
delicious graphical irony.

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LeifCarrotson
The site seems to be suffering a bit - here's the archive:
[https://archive.fo/jpPjF](https://archive.fo/jpPjF) (better that cache
because the images are important).

