The absolutely meaningless pie chart

Simon J., from New Zealand, sent this in during the recent Rugby Cup but I didn't notice it till now.  As he stated, "they do a good job confirming our views of pie charts!"  Dropkicks is a site about rugby, and other sports popular in the south Pacific.

So here is our light entertainment for Thanksgiving week:

This chart accompanied a very serious statistical analysis to address the monumental question of whether some countries were borrowing strength from foreign players.  If this is your cup of tea, follow this link.

P.S. Today I started the Junk Charts Core Collection, which include books I recommend on graphics, statistics, data mining and related topics (top right).  Some categories are sparse right now as I build out the collection.  If you have favorites, let me know and I will include them.  (I am using the Amazon interface to organize the list; if you buy books, you are buying from them.  I am not becoming a bookstore.)

11/19: Amazon seems to be having problems serving up the images.  I have turned off the image for now.  You can follow the text link above to see the book collection.

11/20: the image is up again

Comments

[David]

Thanks for the book list. I already bought one.
-d

[Tony]

Great post! This is one of the better versions of "what not to use for data visualizations" I've seen in some time. This goes nicely with a post I did today on pie charts.

I would also highly recommend Stephen Few's, 'Information Dashboard Design' as a good read. You definitely can't go wrong with E. Tufte!