Pie Charts

Quick reference

• 00:05 Now, I'm not generally a big fan of using pie charts, but
• 00:07 sometimes you're gonna get asked for them, so we need to know how to create them.
• 00:12 We're gonna start by doing a quick build up here of a product line and
• 00:17 sales for a three series pie chart, which we can get by going to Inserts,
• 00:22 we can go to Pie, and we can pick up the 2-D pie chart.
• 00:26 Now, this gives you something that's already got pretty much
• 00:29 most of the stuff baked into it.
• 00:30 But some of the things I wanna show you here, if I wanna move it into the little
• 00:33 grid area that I laid out, I can left click and drag.
• 00:37 I'm gonna hold down my Alt key right now, and you'll notice that as I drag now,
• 00:41 it snaps to grid.
• 00:42 I'm still holding down Alt.
• 00:44 I can resize it so
• 00:45 that it will snap nicely into the areas that I'm actually looking for.
• 00:49 So that's a helpful tip for resizing these things.
• 00:53 Now, some things I should probably do for
• 00:54 my pie chart, right click, Add Data Labels.
• 00:58 I'm gonna also right click and I'm gonna format the data labels.
• 01:02 I'm not so fussed about the values here as much as the percentages,
• 01:05 although I could have them both, but I'm gonna turn the values off.
• 01:10 I never send a pie chart out without the percentages on it.
• 01:13 I think that's important because that's always the second question,
• 01:16 is about precision.
• 01:18 So that's an okay looking pie chart that will work for us.
• 01:21 But, again, because we have this option, what I'd like to do is I'd like to
• 01:25 show you really quickly, if we go to Insert and Bar Charts.
• 01:31 And again, I'm gonna hold down my Alt key and I'll drag it and
• 01:34 snap it into the little grid area that I've built for it.
• 01:38 There we are.
• 01:39 What could I do to quickly customize my bar chart?
• 01:42 Right click, add some data labels, take off the grid lines,
• 01:46 take off these lines right here.
• 01:48 And what you'll see here I think is that it's much easier.
• 01:52 I mean, we can see that apparel is pretty big, but
• 01:54 we've gotta read to get the legend and whatnot where everything's right here.
• 01:57 This is one of the reasons why I really prefer the bar chart.
• 02:00 So when somebody asks you for a pie chart, try and fight the good fight, try and
• 02:04 give them a more effective visualization in the bar chart or column chart version.
• 02:08 But so you don't end up with a career limiting kind of attitude or
• 02:13 whatnot, you probably have to cave in one every ten times just to try and
• 02:16 give them something back that makes them happy.
• 02:18 But regardless,
• 02:20 this is a quick comparison of how effectively different these things look.
• 02:25 Now, that's for three series pie chart.
• 02:27 If you get more than four series, you immediately go to a bar chart,
• 02:30 no question.
• 02:31 Even more than three, you probably should.
• 02:33 It's just too much information to fit in two smaller wedges.
• 02:37 Now, let me show you what happens though a way to soften a pie chart.
• 02:42 We're gonna go with a two series pie chart right now, and
• 02:45 this one is gonna be around the revenue product line and budget shortfall here.
• 02:49 Once again, I'm gonna go to Insert, and we're gonna go to a 2-D pie.
• 02:55 I'll resize this really quickly and get it snapped into our grid area here.
• 02:58 So here we are.
• 03:00 And we'll just resize that, again, holding down the Alt key to snap to grid.
• 03:04 Beautiful, now the challenge that I have with the pie charts
• 03:07 here is that these things really compete for your attention.
• 03:10 No matter how big or small this is on the page, when you have it on there, you could
• 03:14 have the most incredible document written up, but as long as this pie chart is here,
• 03:18 the default instance puts in these deep, dark saturations and fields.
• 03:22 And they're just yelling for your attention.
• 03:23 Hey, hey, I'm over here.
• 03:25 Look at me. I'm a pie chart.
• 03:27 No matter how little value it adds, it's going to be calling out for a distraction.
• 03:32 So how can we fix that problem?
• 03:35 Well, this is where we can actually start playing around with these.
• 03:38 We can grab the chart.
• 03:39 Now, I've selected it once.
• 03:42 I'm now gonna right click and say Format Data Series.
• 03:46 When I say Format Data Series,
• 03:48 it's going to format both of these particular data points that are here.
• 03:52 So I'm gonna click on it again.
• 03:55 And what you'll notice is that we now get into Format Data Point.
• 03:59 Data points are different.
• 04:01 This allows me to actually go through.
• 04:03 The challenge is there's really very little visual indication to show you that
• 04:06 it's different.
• 04:08 But with the data point, I can now go to Fill & Line and I can say, you know,
• 04:12 my border, I'd like to go with a solid line.
• 04:15 And it's gonna set it by default to my color blue, which is fine, and
• 04:19 now I'm gonna go to the Fill, and I'm gonna choose No Fill.
• 04:23 And that will empty it out.
• 04:24 If you do those in the opposite order,
• 04:25 it's a little bit unnerving because your chart goes complete white, okay?
• 04:28 That's a little bit scary.
• 04:30 Now I'm gonna click on the orange data point, and
• 04:33 you'll notice that now we've got the Fill here.
• 04:35 So I'm gonna say, hey, No Fill.
• 04:38 Notice the point goes completely white, that's kind of a little wierd.
• 04:41 So then we'll gonna go back to Solid Line, and
• 04:44 I'll change this to a nice dark orange, and I've now got a slice.
• 04:49 Now, what's interesting here is that I've still got the same information, but
• 04:52 it's softened.
• 04:53 So it's not gonna compete with your attention all the time.
• 04:56 So now I can go back and I can say, all right, well, that's cool and
• 04:59 everything else.
• 04:59 Let's go take a look at these series options again, and
• 05:03 you'll notice that we have the angle of the first slice which would
• 05:05 actually move the first slice around a little bit, so into a different place.
• 05:09 I'm not so fussed about that, but what I would like to do is I'd like to bring
• 05:13 the point explosion out about, I don't know, let's try 16%, sure.
• 05:18 This pops this little piece out.
• 05:21 I can now go, right click.
• 05:24 Actually, let's go and click outside the chart so
• 05:26 that we're dealing with the whole chart, not just a single data point.
• 05:29 We're gonna right click and say, Add Data Labels.
• 05:32 And it will now give me something that allows me to actually
• 05:36 get my data labels on the chart.
• 05:37 Do I want this with the leader line?
• 05:39 Not particularly, so I'll click on him.
• 05:42 We'll go over to the data labels, and we'll turn the leader line off, and
• 05:46 it'll bring it back into the chart nicely.
• 05:48 So that looks a little bit better.
• 05:49 For a more effective version though, we could actually create a stacked bar chart.
• 05:54 So if we quickly go and
• 05:55 create a stacked bar chart, what you'll notice here, let me just clear this off.
• 05:59 Move my chart title down into this area here.
• 06:03 I'll snap it in place.
• 06:05 With this, I actually have all three different product lines in one place, and
• 06:09 that's kinda nice because now I can see all of them.
• 06:12 So if I add data labels, I can go and
• 06:15 remove the grid lines, remove the chart access.
• 06:18 I can come back, right click, format my data labels, and
• 06:21 I can switch them to inside base.
• 06:25 And at this point, I've got a pretty effective chart that shows me
• 06:28 the difference for all three different series.
• 06:30 So again,
• 06:31 pie charts are a little bit limited in what they can display versus the stacked
• 06:35 bar version, gives us more information in an easier to consume format.

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