7 Pie Chart Alternatives in Numbers

Pie charts can represent a simple comparison between a set of values. Here are some other chart variations that you can use to also represent a simple visual comparison.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at some alternatives to using Pie Charts in Numbers.
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So I did a recent video showing how pie charts are a great way to represent a simple set of numbers. But if you find yourself using pie charts a lot there are some alternatives. Here I've got a simple table of numbers and I can select the whole table and since it's just these numbers here that will be represented I can go to Chart and then Pie Chart and I've got my simple pie chart. Very easy to create. 
But what if I wanted to do something a little different. I could, for instance, just create a simple bar chart or column chart. So, for instance, let's create a Column Chart. When I create it you can see each of these different columns represent a different numerical value here. All I need to do really is to get rid of a lot of the extra stuff that the chart has. So under Format, Chart I can turn off the Legend for starters. I can also go to Access here and I can turn off the value Labels and do the same thing for the X Axis. I can also get rid of Gridlines. So the Y Axis has some gridlines here. I can get rid of those and here I can get rid of the axis line. Now I've just got a simple set of bars. I can go in here and choose for category labels AutoFit Category and you can see each one is now nicely labeled. 
Let's bring this chart up here next to the data and another way I can represent this is to actually have each bar be a different color. Now this is all represented as a series right now. So they are all blue because they are part of the same series. But if I click Edit Data References and go up to the dot here above the column I can change from Plot Column as Series to Plot Rows as Series. So when I do that you can see now I've got each column is a different series. So each one gets its own color. Now the label here isn't as useful. I'll get rid of that. But if I now go to Series I can set the value labels so I could have the source data in there and I can even have it set to the middle. So it's in the middle of each bar. So now I've got these bars here representing each one of the values. If I select this and then go to Chart and then change the Chart Type to 2D Bar instead of column you see I get the same thing but now with horizontal bars. 
Now another thing you can do is stacked bar or stacked column. So I'm going to select the table again and I'm going to go to Chart and I'm going to select Stacked Bars here. Now when I do that it's going to put each in its own bar because this column represents one series. But, if instead I click Edit Data References and then click the dot at the top of the column and switch to Plot Rows as a series you can see now that it is all just one bar with a different part of that bar representing each row. I'll click Done here because I'm done editing the data references and let me move this next to it here and let's alter it here by going to the axis here. Let's get rid of the axis line. Let's get rid of the labels. Let's switch to the other axis there and get rid of the gridlines there as well. Let's go to Chart and we can get rid of the legend here. Then we just have one more axis line here that actually has the value labels there. I'll get rid of that. So now we just have this bar here. 
I can shrink this down to make it look more useful. Kind of looks like the bar that maps use to show you storage. If you change a value here you can see how it is reflected there. Now if I go to Series here I can change the value labels and I can have the number shown in there as well. I can select, say, the middle to have them all there in the middle like that. One last thing I want to show you under Format, Chart there is rounded corners. So you can round off the corners like that to make it look even more attractive. 
Another idea here is to use a Radar Chart. Go to Chart here and select Radar. What this shows you here, we'll move it next to it, is that say B goes all the way to the end here. It's the largest value. D is the next largest value. See it there as a 7 as opposed to an 8. E is pretty small. So this gives you a sense of the size comparison for each one of these using a very different visual. You have lots of things you can do here. You can change the style to Curved Style. You can have it filled in or just a line or both. Change the background and do lots of stuff to customize a Radar.
Next I want to show you using a Bubble Chart. Now a Bubble Chart will put a dot at an x and y location and also the dot will have a different size. So what we want to do here is forget the x and y location. We just want to use the Bubble Chart just to show circles of different sizes. Kind of like columns but instead of a column there is a circle for each one and it is bigger for bigger values. To do that, one way is to have a series of values here where you have the x and y and then the value. x,y,value. Set if up like this. You could just have one zero, two zero, three zero and all of that and pull these values from some other table right here. The actual value for the size. I'm going to select this entire thing here.  I'm going to go to Chart and say Bubble and I'm going to get this which isn't useful at all. But if I click Edit Data References and change to take away the shared x values first and then plot rows as a series. Now you can see I get the series of dots here.
So all that is left for me to do is to go through, get rid of the legend, go through all of the different axis settings here. Get rid of the labels. Get rid of the gridlines. You end up with something like this. I can even select it and then for the series I could go in and set the values, like that, and it will show the size. Or I can have it show the series names in there instead. It is strange that you have all this blank space here. But you can just ignore that and just put that where you want. Then notice that I changed something, like maybe let's make this value much bigger. You can see how everything changes relative to it. You get an idea of which one of these is the largest and which is the smallest. Just like with a pie chart. 
Now a pretty straight forward replacement for a pie chart is a doughnut chart. They are essentially the same except, of course, a doughnut has a hole in the middle. So with the Table selected I'll create a doughnut chart here. You can see how it looks a lot like a pie chart. You can turn the Legend on and off. You can go to different segments. Turn on and off the leader line. Decide exactly what fits into the slices there in the doughnut. You can also, under segments, change the inner radius. So you can make it bigger or smaller. One of the key reasons to use a doughnut chart is to actually put something in the middle. Like a graphic or something that tells you a little bit about the data there. 
Now here's another idea that uses doughnut charts but in a special way. I'm going to select this table here and do Chart and create a doughnut chart. But instead of having this be the full circle let's have it be half a circle. First let's customize this a bit. Let's get rid of the Legend. For the segments here let's get rid of the values and just have it be like this. Instead I'll include the Data Point names. No leader lines here. I'll just have it inside like that. I can adjust where they are. So this is good. But what would be nice is to have half a circle instead of a full circle. Let's move this up here and next to it. 
I'm going to create a new table that is just a single cell table. I'm not going to leave this on the screen. I may actually Hide it when I'm done. The idea here is this value is going to be a SUM formula and adding up all values here. So I've got all of these, which add up to 33 and then the value of 33. Now I'm going to go back in here and Edit Data References. I'm going to click on this cell to add it. You can see it's added this extra one right here. So let's go and click Done. Then I'm going to select this one here and I'm going to take away the Data Point Names, like that. I'm also going to go to Style and change from Color Fill to No Fill. So now it is half a circle. All I need to do is go to Format, Segment and there's a rotation angle. I can set that to 90 degrees. Now it looks like this. So that's really handy. You can even have this as, say, a multiple 3 times the amount and now it is a quarter of this. We would change rotation here to be 45 degrees and you've got something like that. 
Now one last alternative. That is to not use a chart at all. If you add an extra column to this table here I can add a formula to it using the REPT or repetition function. I'm going to use a character. I'm just going to do a simple x in quotes there, like that. Then I'm going to assign the value of the cell to the left. So now it is going to put 5 x's because that is the value 5. If I were to instead of an x go in here and, let's say, use an emoji. I'm going to look for square. There are a bunch of square characters here. Let's choose this red square like that. Now you can see it gives me 5 red squares. I can Copy and Paste this here. Let's expand this column a bit. You could see that I get the number of squares for the number that is here on the left. So I get a little bar chart here that is imbedded in the table. It is not a separate thing. You can even go in here and change Format Text and have it centered. So you have basically the larger bars representing a larger numbers. So you basically are just comparing the sizes of the bars. 
So I hope you learned some Number's charting techniques from this. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “7 Pie Chart Alternatives in Numbers”

Robert Bailey

1 year ago

The last version using emojis could be extremely useful! Thank you!

Larry Mortimer

Gary, I can use these tricks. Thanks! Larry

nick

Hey Gary, slightly off topic but related...I added a background image to a chart, but there doesn't seem to be a way to control the transparency of the image. thx

Gary Rosenzweig

nick: How about putting the background as its own element BEHIND the chart instead?

Yes, that works great Gary. As a long time Excel user and having decided to move to Numbers for good, I remember one comment you made in one of your videos that Numbers is more like a canvas rather than just a spreadsheet. That comment made it all make sense to me and convinced me to use Numbers instead. Thanks.

Comments Closed.

7 Pie Chart Alternatives in Numbers

Comments: 5 Responses to “7 Pie Chart Alternatives in Numbers”

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