CREATING PIE CHARTS

Practise drawing pie charts with given data and your own data.

TASK 1 Draw a pie chart

Jon decided to sort his CDs into categories. He found that he had 30 Rock CDs, 10 Country & Western,
15 Classical and 5 Pop CDs.

Draw a pie chart to display Jon’s CD collection. A circle and one radius have been drawn for you.

First calculate the total number of CDs and the angles needed for each type of CD. The first row has
been done for you. Complete the table.

Total number of CDs = _______

CD type Number Calculation Angle

Rock 30 30 180°
× 360°
60

Country & Western

Classical

Pop
TASK 2 Draw a pie chart using your own data

Collect data from your classmates, which is suitable to display on a pie chart.

Think carefully about the types of categories to display as well as how many people to survey.

A suggestion could be to survey their type of transport to school: train, bus, walk or car. However,
what would the whole circle represent if some students go by train and bus? And doesn’t everyone
walk at some stage on their way to school? The wording of your survey will affect the data you collect.

Things to consider
A sector is easier to draw if you survey 30, 36, 60 people rather than 25 or 32. Why?
What does your whole circle represent?
Is a pie chart suitable for displaying the number of children in each student’s family? Discuss why.
How many categories of data would it be sensible to include in any one circle?
All graphs need titles and each sector must be labelled. Think about short yet descriptive titles and
category labels for your data.
How can you include labels for tiny sectors?
What is a key and how can it be used in pie charts?
What information or meaning is the chart trying to convey? Why is the chart better at this than just
a table of data?