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I have typical web app. where the user effectively makes a query and he/she gets back some data. The data is in the format of 1 dimension/1 metric. For instance:

  • city/population
  • country/population
  • gender/population

on returning the data my javascript uses the google charts api and displays either a pie chart or table chart or a line chart...

Depending...

What I discovered is that if I have two or three cities a pie chart is perfect, however if I have hundreds of cities a Pie chart is awful. (and hence I switch to a table chart)

My question is:

What's the algorithm to choose the most appropriate chart depending on the data ? Have people made some studies on this ?

For instance one simple answer (e.g. my current implementation) says:

if the number of cities is smaller than 5 use a pie chart
else use a table chart

Can somebody suggest a better algorithm ?

Also can somebody point me to some external resources where this problem is discussed?

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    What pie charts are best at is showing proportions, e.g. % votes for each candidate, breakdown of a group by age range, etc. It sounds like you're showing independent values. Is that correct?
    – Monica Cellio
    May 21, 2012 at 18:55

1 Answer 1

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According to this Workshop result, you should not have more than five "parts" in a pie chart, just as you also suggested. (Pie charts are covered about 3/4 into the article).

The workshop also discusses a range of other best practices when displaying data graphically.

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  • Quite a lot of stuff in your link. Thanks for that. Interesting thanks
    – jad
    May 21, 2012 at 11:28
  • I thought that too! 208 pages of goodness! =)
    – AndroidHustle
    May 21, 2012 at 11:30

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