Science

Pi Pie Chart

For today’s special Pi Day version of Bad Chart Thursday, I present to you the distribution of digits in the first 1,000 decimal places of pi, presented as a pie chart:

pi pie

Remarkably, when I Googled for this, I was only able to find the frequency of digits in pi represented in bar charts, which is obviously a ridiculous thing to do, considering the pun opportunities. So, fixed.

As an accompaniment, please enjoy this related clip from How I Met Your Mother:

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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10 Comments

  1. But… But this is a GOOD chart! Where is the bad chart? Oh I guess maybe it’s the bar graph.

  2. Have to say – that is probably my favorite “How I Met Your Mother”. My buddy Doug would have loved it! Let’s make a pie chart about pie charts! Classic!

    1. That show has so very very many excellent episodes, and making charts by hand is one of my guilty pleasures, so of COURSE that’s one of the best episodes.

  3. I did a similar project using the first 200 million digits of pi. The digits came out uniformly distributed at 10.00% each, but I didn’t have a way of verifying that the data I was analyzing were the actual digits of pi.

    1. That sounds right. The numbers of pi are thought to be completely random (though this has not been proven), so 10% of each makes sense.

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