In the nascent world of visualization, so many times I see builders of viz's choose form over function when trying to communicate pieces of data to a consumer. I remember when I first started building reports, boy I loved me some pie charts. You would think I actually received a pie for every pie chart I used because I used to many pie charts. But then I had an epiphany. Pie charts kind of suck. So this article I think is funny. Any pie chart should probably be called a mistake, however some of these are classic. My favorite are the radial charts.

5. Radial charts

Cartesian charts are much more in keeping with our mental models and organization of the world. Rectangular shapes the primary form for everything from packaging to architecture. Even our writing happens in Cartesian space. Radial charts look cool, but they make the data much harder to read. Keep your charts rectangular and show that data off.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with number 7. There are times when using "overloaded charts" can convey your story much clearer as it shows a scale of how many inputs and why the piece of data is an outlier. But be careful when using this technique, because as in the example shown below, if there are no outliers, it just becomes a jumbled chart.