Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: More Than Pie Charts

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: More Than Pie Charts has the tagline "For actionable BI decisions, don't rely on simple, outdated visualization and presentation techniques."

A dizzying array of great technology exists today that addresses most business intelligence (BI)-centric issues. But then why is it that much of what is being implemented is uninspiring BI technology that leads to mediocre solutions? Case in point, the ever-present pie chart.


Can you effectively interrogate a large OLAP cube using a simple pie chart? Can you really report and communicate all the necessary insight through your dashboard, given the volume and complexity of data, with just a pie chart? The obvious answer is no. But any of the advanced tools necessary to address complex BI issues seem slow in adoption, including visualization (Gartner, Dec. 5, 2003). Even though more robust visualization tools and technologies are available, the pie chart continues to be thrown in front of users.

The article advocates some cutting-edge visualization such as 3d surface maps, for example:



My answer? You've got to be kidding. Of course Pie charts aren't good for OLAP cubes - they only show two dimensions, and they are not deigned for viewing time trends. That's what bar charts and line graphs are for.

I've designed a few dashboards, and a few visualization techniques for a variety of customers, and without exception the fastest and easiest way to process a large amount of information are pies, bars, and line graphs. And I'll add maps into the mix for a geographic dimension, they can help some process great deal of information quickly in some cases. But all of the fancy stuff? Spiders, Voronois, Kaplan-Meiers, Lineaments and others? They make great gee-whiz graphs, but in just about every case you can get more inforation faster from the basic ones. They are great eye candy and good conversation pieces, but I wouldn't challenge someone to make a quick decision by looking at any of them.

Stick with the tried and true choices (including pie charts) which are popular because they are proven.