A pie chart is a round graph divided into sectors that illustrates percentages of a whole. It is named after the way we normally divide a pie into slices. Whether it is effective depends on the type of data you want to present. What really matters is whether you can make it funny.

Year-end Music Chart

Vulture constructed a pie chart explaining Pitchfork’s top 100 songs of 2007. They knew what kind of discussion the list would elicit, and went ahead and crunched the numbers.

Pie Chart

What could make more sense than a pie chart that’s all about pies?

Pie Consumption Chart

A pie chart about the consumption of pie needs a bit more detail. If this were a apple or chocolate pie, I’d believe it. If it were a rhubarb pie, much less would be consumed. But if it were a blackberry pie, the entire pan would be consumed.

Time Spent

A pie chart showing how we spend our time can be depressing or even frightening. I’d hate to plot mine.

Web Development Time

A post about how to make pie charts gives us an illustration of how the author spends his time on web development projects. See the full size version at the original site.

The Dating Pool

A blogger friend of mine wrote about the lack of eligible men in her area. I used the Create A Graph program to make a pie chart out of the data she mentioned.

Then I made one from my own (made up) data explaining why I don’t have a boyfriend. “Picky” means a good man who can pick any woman he wants.

Pac-man

The self-referential Pac-man pie chart has been around for awhile, but it’s still funny!

Rick Astley

The Rick Astley pie chart doesn’t follow the basic premise of a pie chart, but still makes you smile, at least a little.

Anatomical Structure

GraphJam, the site that collects submissions of interesting charts and graphs of all kind, has some nice pie charts. This one by James L is like the Pac-man chart in that it resembles the subject it explains.

Who Makes the World Go ‘Round

Michael F. S. submitted this one that illustrates clearly and simply what Queen told us twenty years ago. Pie helps to make it happen.

Pi Chart

If you experience a typo and drop the “e”, you have a totally different kind of pi chart.

I think I might need to go get a pizza now. If you  enjoyed these, you might want to check out Fun with Venn and Euler Diagrams and Fun with Flow Charts.