Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by PheonixPharts 865 days ago
> It's not that bad when the purpose of the pie is not to figure out which group is the biggest

But it's not better than a sorted table:

- A (90%)

- B (5.1%)

- C (4.9%)

Which group there is biggest? Which is the smallest?

> why would you not order them already inside the chart?

What's the implicit ordering of a pie chart? It's not hard to define one that makes sense (start at midnight) but it's not implicit in the chart, it needs to be explained to the viewer. Since similar sized portions of the chart are hard to distinguish, there's no way to be visually certain that you are correctly understanding the ordering.