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Writer's pictureAbhay Khullar

Alternatives to pie charts: Tips for better data visualization - Tableau

The pie chart is one instance where the data analysts as well as the end users believe that the visualization can use an alternative which is a best fit solution to display the data. This post will run through a couple of different common practices for visualizing data and project that there are better alternatives.


There are few opinions which point out that pie charts should never be used and will resort to using bar chart or line chart as an alternative, however I personally believe that getting rid of pie chart altogether is not a solution and instead using them in moderation while having an option for other alternatives can lead to an innovative final visualization.

I will cover 5 unorthodox alternative to boring pie chart data visualization so that the developers or analysts can have the freedom of selection while designing the worksheets or dashboards as per their project story lines:



The Donut Chart

Sometimes when the analyst wishes to convey the variance and ranking as a part of whole, the donut chart can be used. As an example we have drawn a worksheet which projects distribution of profit per region per country before using the donut chart based view in a KPI driven profit view:

The KPI driven profit view will look like this:

The visualization can be downloaded from here : Donut Chart



The Bump Chart

If variance is not of a concern or not part of the use case and the prime focus is on ranking then we can definitely go in for a special version of line chart called as bump chart. The below image projects the ranking of categories on a month/year basis with a selection menu available to follow the flow of ranking for a particular category from base year to end year:

The visualization can be downloaded from here: Bump Chart



Tree map

A primary argument against the pie chart is that humans are not good at detecting differences between angle sizes. Tree maps alleviate this by using area instead of angles to designate proportion. The image below shows the distribution of customer count by job and which is filter-driven by state map view i.e. a click on a particular state in map view will drive the values for tree map and other visualizations in the dashboard:

The visualization can be downloaded from here: Tree map



Waffle Chart

The waffle chart is a really fun chart, not just because it’s named after food but because it’s typically made with 100 squares representing the whole, it can be shaded or filled based on the relation of several parts to a whole, just like a pie chart, but it’s also good for displaying a single percentage.

The image here projects how a region is performing in terms of profit ratio for a particular category selected:

The visualization can be downloaded from here: Waffle Chart



Modified Bar charts

I have created two modified bar charts which projects the distribution of states or how the states are performing in terms of profit and sales. One of them is a revised version of


  • Bullet chart

The visualization can be downloaded from here : Bullet Chart


Another is what we term as


  • Stacked title bar chart

The visualization can be downloaded from here : Stacked title bar chart


These are only a handful of diverse and creative ways you can visualize data. We can also consider other unusual diagram alternatives: Marimekko charts, Sankey flow diagrams, radial pie charts, and sunburst charts but they will be inspected in deep details in our coming blogs.

Till then Happy Analyzing!!



an article by Abhay Khullar


Abhay Khullar consult organizations on Business Analytics, Machine Learning and Data Visualization. He is experienced in research and analysis in new business opportunities, adjacent market segments, new product ideas, go-to-market strategies and globalization.


He has worked on several engagements in consumer products, F&B, oral care, cosmetics and health care. Adept in solving business problems using Business Analytics and Machine Learning methodologies.

After starting his career 9 years back in Mainframe DB2, he moved onto Analytics domain and held various roles. Mostly working with CXOs, IT infrastructure managers and students, he has always been focusing on building knowledge and end-to-end solutions in Business Analytics and Data Visualization.

He is an expert in creating numerical models for statistical analysis on research data and building financial models.

He is a certified Tableau and Six Sigma green belt associate and also MBA in Operations/Supply Chain. He is also a core member and speaker at Delhi Tableau User Group.

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