When is a "Pie Chart" acceptable to use?
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In all seriousness tho I teach that if you have fewer than 5 categories, pref 2-3, and you need to very quickly show a vast difference between parts of a whole, with no careful discernment needed between slices, pie is ok.
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They can be useful as markers on geomaps. Image source: onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/de
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Those pies in the Dakota are certainly useful markers of where a readable pie chart should be
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Pie charts are fine! Why are they taboo? If they’re a great way to visualise the data you want visualised, just fucking use it.
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I used pie graphs in a paper under review atm and sized the pies proportional to the number of underlying tokens. (Using Pi with pies!). There were 8 categories but most were greyed, using colour for only the two I needed visualised. Pies FTW!
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2-4 categories max., just a general indication of ratio is required. And for the love of all that is good and pure, no 3D effects.
jokes apart, when you have categorical values (generally percentages) that add up to a whole (100% in case of percentages), pie charts are the way to go; for example, a chart depicting the distribution of domains where college graduates end up working