Excel 2013 Pie Charts are very common, but have three weaknesses we’ll explore and work around in Excel Video 462. The first challenge with a pie chart is that it takes up a lot of space relative to the amount of data the chart conveys. The second challenge is that it’s hard to tell the relative order of the pie slices. Readers can usually determine which slice is the biggest, but it can be harder to decide the order of other pie slices. The third challenge with pie charts is determining the relative sizes of pie slices. Due to the circular nature of the pie chart and the geometry of circles, it’s often hard to determine if a pie slice is twice as big as another slice or just two-thirds as big as another pie slice, for example.
Watch for some Excel features and tricks that can overcome some of these weakness to some extent. Also watch for how column and bar charts can overcome weaknesses inherent in pie charts.
Stay tuned. Next time we’ll look at several other Excel charts included in Excel 2013.