Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Enough Pies, I’m Full!

In homage to the Thanksgiving celebration about to take place in the USA I thought I’d place a bet on what I think will be the most overused (and least useful) feature of PPS 2010 analytic reports.

Multiple pie charts!

Those who have used ProClarity will recognize this multi-pie functionality. See how easily you can determine which of the clothing, bikes and components categories sold the most in CY 2008?

ManyPieCharts

I believe that pie charts were included in PPS 2010 as a “required feature” by the sales team. If you listen carefully to some of the PPS team members as they present the latest features you can hear a slight tinge of cynicism in their voices as they say “oh yeah, we support pie charts now too…”

So I ask you, what’s better than a single pie chart?

DECLARE
  @PieCounter INT = 1,
  @EnoughPies INT = 10 -- enough pies, I'm full!
WHILE @PieCounter < @EnoughPies
  BEGIN
        PRINT 'The only thing better than ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(2), @PieCounter)
        + ' pie chart/s is ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(2), @PieCounter + 1)
        + ' pie charts!'
  SET @PieCounter += 1
  END 
at

4 comments:

  1. Dr John11:57 AM

    Clearly your coding did not take into account Stephen Few's opinion of pie charts. The code should have been:

    DECLARE
    @PieCounter INT = 2,
    @EnoughPies INT = 10

    PRINT 'One pie chart on a dashboard is bad enough'

    WHILE @PieCounter <= @EnoughPies
    BEGIN
    IF (@PieCounter = 10)
    PRINT 'A dashboard with 10 pie charts! It must have been designed by Boris Evelson!'
    ELSE
    PRINT CONVERT(VARCHAR(2), @PieCounter) + ' pie charts are even worse'
    SET @PieCounter += 1
    END
    PRINT ''
    PRINT 'Pie charts really make me sick!'

    If you want a laugh, read Stephen's vitriol on Boris Evelson at http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=637

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nick Barclay8:15 PM

    Thanks for the code improvement Dr John :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:58 PM

    So what you need there is some variable scaling on your pie charts to show relative sales. Would it then become a bubble-pie chart? Or a pie-bubble chart? Maybe you could have a flag sticking up from the centre of each pie with a number on it showing the total pie-size?

    *chuckle*

    Random musings only... no response required.

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete