What kind of chart is this?

Question

This is not a donut chart.. not showing distribution here. These are different attributes contributing to the total score (in the middle)

Another example:

The thickness of the wedge is proportionate to the severity of the alert type.

Is there any other chart that works well for this type of data?

Answer 1

Since the attributes are not distribution, you could show the initial score, and place a severity breakdown below. Allow hovertips and details for drilldown.

Instead of focusing on the current chart (the implementation, or 'how'), maybe we can address the possible questions in the users mind (the problem space).

• What is my current threat/security score? Should I be concerned?
• What's contributing to it?
• Which attributes are at dangerous levels?
• How can I get more details on this? (if there's a problem)

Here's a first sketch to prompt a discussion. I'll update my initial answer as needed.

It seems like you have:

• a total score
• its attributes (composition)
• a severity level for each attribute, which looks like it's tied to the count of a specific attribute.

Understanding attributes and severity levels

For a severity level, it appears that some attributes can have a higher count, but still have a lower severity level. Is that correct?

A tabular breakdown might seem less 'visual', but with a limited amount of attributes, you can order by severity, and show a decent amount of information in a relatively small space.

And unlike a polar chart, the labels aren't spaced out too far, so your eyes don't need to move much to take in all the attributes, their counts, and severity level.

If so, you could have a column that measures the severity, with a 'no threat' for attributes that are 'in the clear'.

The difficult part could be in making a universal Severity scale, not necessarily tied to the count.

Answer 2

This is an absolute 'No no' in creating charts. This is a very bad way of representing data, to make it look like Donut chart but non-functional. It doesn't matter if the thickness is proportional to the value, that is a secondary dimension. The primary dimension must be proportional to the primary value. Having a regular Donut chart is adequate for this problem.

Answer 3

The most approximate chart to the provided images is a Donut Chart. Refer to this link about how to use donut charts.

Answer 4

Topologically, it looks the same as a Spider chart with 4 variables, but each variable is displayed as a quarter-circle instead of a point.

Answer 5

That looks like a form of polar area diagram.

Also known as a ‘rose diagram’, this is almost 200 years old, and was popularised by Florence Nightingale to highlight death rates in different months:

It uses equal angles, with the radius indicating the magnitude.  (Though that means the area isn't proportional.  Alternatively, you could use area to indicate the magnitude, but then the radius wouldn't be proportional…)

It's most often used with sequential data, often larger sets, but I found this example with 4 separate values:

That doesn't use the full circle, and isn't annular (with a hole in the centre) like the chart shown in the question.  But I don't think those are very important.

Personally, I don't like the lack of proportionality in the areas, nor the use of a sequential chart for isolated values, nor the difficulty of comparing non-adjacent values.  So I'd probably suggest something more like a bar chart in this case.

But there's ample precedent (some of it historically important) for this sort of diagram!

Answer 6

It looks like a 2x2 matrix diagram combined with a donut chart in the center that shows the total count. A bar chart or heatmap table would be a better form of communicating the relationship between the numbers, e.g: