In case you’re not aware, today is March 14, 2014—3/14/14—better known as Pi Day.  For some, this is probably an excuse to eat a lot of pie and for others it’s probably an excuse to memorize some number of digits of pi. For some, however, it’s the opportunity to do something about pie charts.

To counter bad pie charts, Xan Gregg is encouraging people to replace them in your own work or in a public space like Wikipedia with better visualizations. You can leave a comment on Xan’s blog or tweet with the tag #onelesspie to share your revisions.

For those of you who want to have some fun on this Pi Day, I’ve posted three pie charts for possible revision. The data are included in this Excel file. Maybe the conversation can demonstrate to others the advantages of different approaches to pie charts.

If you’re not up for any of it, that’s fine too; just enjoy a slice of pie instead.

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“The basic story is that mandatory spending has been growing as an overall share of government spending. The dollar figures are in 2009 dollars. My point in the presentation is that mandatory spending is crowding out other priorities (education, infrastructure, etc.).

During one presentation, a person said that they didn’t see the point because all of the spending fit within the pie. Hence, to them, the visual didn’t (a) reflect how much larger overall spending was in 2012 versus 1970 since the pies are the same size; (b) the wedges are larger as a percentage but not relational to how much money is being spent; (c) it appears that everything is affordable because all of the spending remains inside the pie – there’s nothing to indicate we’re spending more money than we bring in via revenues, etc.

I’ve toyed with different presentations and have come up empty. How would you convey to an audience that not only is mandatory spending crowding out discretionary spending – but the dollars involved are much larger in magnitude?”

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