Statistics: Pie Chart

Pie Chart

If knowing about a “part of the whole” is an important consideration, then a pie chart is a good choice for showing particular data. A pie chart may also display each category's percentage of the total. Using data from Table 1 , we get the pie chart shown in Figure 1 .

TABLE 1

Yearly Expenses of a College Undergraduate

*Item*	*Amount*
Tuition fees	$5,000
Room and board	9,000
Books and lab	2,000
Clothes/cleaning	1,000
Transportation	2,000
Insurance and miscellaneous	1,000

Figure 1

Pie chart presentation of the expenditures of a college undergraduate for the past year.

The parts of the circle (or pie) match in size each category's percentage of the total. The parts of the pie chart are ordered from highest to lowest for easier interpretation of the data. Pie charts work best with only a few categories; too many categories will make a pie chart confusing.