Donut Chart

A donut chart is a type of pie chart that features a hole in the center, similar to a donut.

In most cases, a donut chart can replace a pie chart since their use-cases are not vastly different. A donut chart typically shows the proportions of categorical data where the size of each piece of the donut communicates the proportion of each category.

The simplest example could be the extension of an elementary math problem. Assuming we have twenty apples, ten bananas, fifteen oranges, and seven pineapples, which fruit has the highest proportion in the basket? The donut with the longest arc represents the fruit that is present, as it happens, in abundance.

But to say that these are the only uses of a donut chart would be too simplistic. In general, a donut chart occupies far less space than its pie counterpart, which makes it ideal for placing in dashboards that already have a lot of information to process, as well as in business reports where data needs to be visualized simultaneously to draw the best insights.

For example, a donut chart of electronics sales for a company in 2020 can be placed inside a donut chart of electronics sales in 2021. Doing so allows one to place the data table right next to the chart and communicate more information than would be possible by placing two charts next to each other, and their corresponding data table underneath.