How to make a pie chart: add your category counts to find the total, divide each count by that total and use those shares as slices. Check what the total includes before styling the chart. For a digital version, enter the rows in our pie chart maker, which draws a ring rather than a filled circle.
What exactly does your circle count?
A pie chart shows category shares of one defined total, so every observation needs one exclusive category. In this example, the observations are people arriving at a workshop. We record one principal arrival mode per person, using the mode for the main part of the trip. Someone who walks to a bus stop and travels the main part by bus counts once under Transit.
We use a fictional worksheet with bike 24, transit 12, walking 9 and car 5. “Transit” means public transport. The copied counts add to 50. Treat this first version as the worksheet we have in front of us; later, we’ll find and correct a transcription error. These invented numbers describe no actual workshop or travel survey.
| Principal mode | Recorded people |
|---|---|
| Bike | 24 |
| Transit | 12 |
| Walk | 9 |
| Car | 5 |
Keep the grand total outside the category rows. Adding “Total, 50” as another slice would count the parts again. Also check the question: a survey that lets people select every mode they used can count one person more than once. Those answers are not exclusive shares of the participant total.
An omitted category makes a normalized pie look complete even though the underlying dataset is missing observations. If you deliberately chart only respondents with a known mode, name that narrower group and disclose the exclusions. A complete-looking circle does not establish that all participants were counted.
How do you calculate shares and slice angles?
Divide a category’s count by the total to get its share. Multiplying the share by 100 gives a percentage; multiplying it by 360 degrees gives the angle at the circle’s center. A sector is the wedge between two radii, the straight lines joining the center to the edge.
For bike arrivals in the original worksheet, the share is 24 ÷ 50 = 0.48. That gives 0.48 × 100 = 48% and 0.48 × 360° = 172.8°. The count is 24, the percentage is 48% and the angle is 172.8 degrees. They describe the same category in different units.
Calculate a pie slice’s angle by dividing its count by the total, then multiplying by 360 degrees.
The remaining original sectors are transit 24% and 86.4 degrees, walk 18% and 64.8 degrees, and car 10% and 36 degrees. The percentages sum to 100%; the angles sum to 360 degrees. These checks catch arithmetic errors, though they cannot detect a wrongly copied source count.
Use the unrounded counts for every calculation. If you already have percentage numbers, divide them by 100 before multiplying by 360. Entering 48 × 360 would confuse 48% with a share of 48 whole circles.
How do you make the digital version?
A donut chart uses a hollow center but still shows each category’s share of the same total. Our pie chart examples explain the circular form; the maker used here draws every pie as a donut. The paper method below produces a filled circle.
We checked the English maker’s import, image exports and copied-link reload on 4 November 2026. Start with the four original counts, then make the correction in the next exercise.
- Open Paste data and paste a header row followed by the four category/count rows. Put “Mode” and “People” in the headers, with one category and one plain count per row.
- Check that the import preview shows four rows and one numeric series. Select Use this data.
- Set Chart title to a description of this worksheet. Use Design for appearance and Preview to inspect the result.
- Compare the displayed values with the source rows before opening Export. For the original worksheet, the legend should show 48%, 24%, 18% and 10%.
| Label | People |
|---|---|
| Bike | 24 |
| Transit | 12 |
| Walk | 9 |
| Car | 5 |
Try it with your data
Use short, specific labels. At the tested export size, “Public transport” was shortened in the legend, so the article uses “Transit” and defines it above. Keep the complete meaning in the source table. Check the image at its intended reading size; enlarging the browser window does not tell you whether a slide label will be readable.
How can you draw the same chart on paper?
Draw a circle with a compass, mark its center and draw a radius straight upward. Place the protractor’s center on the circle’s center, with its zero line aligned to that radius. Measure the first angle clockwise, mark the point and draw the next radius through it.
Move the protractor’s zero line to the radius you just drew, then measure the next sector. Do not keep measuring every sector from the original starting line: each listed angle gives a sector’s width, not its cumulative position. Continue around the circle and label the categories and percentages.
For ordinary degree markings, the original angles round to about 173, 86, 65 and 36 degrees. They happen to sum to 360 degrees in this example. The drawing is approximate; the source counts and calculated decimal angles stay unchanged. With other data, check the rounding before drawing the last boundary.
Statistics Canada and Serlo describe this construction from shares and sector angles. You can follow the calculation without using our maker.
Try it with your data
New on Meiku Charts
Box plots, and scatter plots with two number axes
Compare how values spread across groups with a box plot. Plot one measure against another with a line of best fit, r and R².
See what changed →What changes when one source count is wrong?
Suppose the original attendance records show 16 transit arrivals, but the worksheet copied only 12. Correct that entry. The recorded total is now 24 + 16 + 9 + 5 = 54; the first total of 50 was based on the transcription error. We have corrected the records, not added fictional attendees to an unchanged complete group.
When one category count changes the total, recalculate every percentage using the corrected counts and total. Bike still has 24 people, but 24 ÷ 54 × 100 is about 44.4%, rather than 48%. Transit becomes about 29.6%, walk 16.7% and car 9.3%, using one decimal place.
If you keep the old denominator, the total you divide by, at 50, the revised category percentages add to 108%. Recompute from the corrected total instead of shrinking a label until it looks plausible. In the German export we checked, the legend rounded the corrected shares to whole percentages: 44%, 30%, 17% and 9%. That is a display precision choice; the underlying counts remain 24, 16, 9 and 5.
Small rounding differences can also occur with correct data. Three equal categories displayed as 33.3% each sum to 99.9%. Keep the full source values, state the rounding and avoid silently changing an original count to force the labels to 100%.
A measured zero has a zero share and no visible sector. An unknown count is not a measured zero. Resolve the missing data or explain a narrower total before drawing the circle. Negative counts and a zero total do not work for this arrival-share exercise.
When should you use bars or a waffle instead?
Use bars when the question is which categories are close, how large a difference is, or how several groups compare. The ONS recommends a small number of substantially different shares for a pie; similar-sized segments call for a bar chart. Our bar graph guide shows how to build that comparison from category counts.
| Label | People |
|---|---|
| Bike | 24 |
| Transit | 12 |
| Walk | 9 |
| Car | 5 |
A percentage waffle divides the whole into equal cells. For the original worksheet, a 100-cell waffle can allocate 48 cells to bike, 24 to transit, 18 to walking and 10 to car. Each cell is one percentage point; each of the 50 recorded people corresponds to two cells. Do not label one cell as one person.
| Label | People |
|---|---|
| Bike | 24 |
| Transit | 12 |
| Walk | 9 |
| Car | 5 |
After the correction to 54, the exact shares no longer fit that whole-cell allocation. A waffle then needs an explained rounding rule, or you can use the counts as bars. The waffle example and chart-type guide help you choose a form for the question, rather than treating every alternative as a better-looking pie.
How do you label and share the checked chart?
Give the reader a category name and a value, with the counted group and source nearby. Keep access to the original rows. W3C guidance asks for essential chart information to have a text alternative and for meaning to be conveyed by more than color alone. A colored legend with names and numbers is more useful than an instruction to find “the green slice”; a source table also lets readers check exact counts.
PNG and SVG exports are fixed images; keep an editable source so you can revise the chart later. In Export, download the format your destination needs and use Copy link to keep a way back to the editable data. We reloaded the copied links in both language versions and checked the restored rows.
That editing link contains its data, so share it only with people who may see those values. After correcting the worksheet, copy a fresh link and reload it to check that it contains 24, 16, 9 and 5. Keep that corrected link; the link copied before the edit still contains the original counts.
A copied embed carries a chart specification describing the chart’s data and settings. A page can supply an updated specification, but pasting spreadsheet cells into the maker does not set up an automatic spreadsheet feed. The embed documentation describes that update contract.
Before sending a corrected image, replace the earlier export too. Otherwise the worksheet can be right while the slide still shows the old total.
Comments