Last month the IMF published their latest Global Financial Stability Report. A colleague, who knows I rarely approve of pie charts*, drew my attention to the charts on page 27 of Chapter 3 of the report, which I have reproduced here (click on the image to enlarge).
Here the authors of the report have decided to attempt some graphical improvisation, taking the pie chart and extending it. Over time some inspired new chart designs have been developed, but these have been rare. More often the result is inferior to using an established technique. While I do not wish to discourage innovation, the results should always be tested before being foisted on an unsuspecting audience.
The aim of this pair of charts is to illustrate the dwindling supply of “safe assets” in the form of highly rated sovereign debt as a result of the global financial crisis. For example, at the end of 2007, 68% of advanced economies boasted a AAA Standard & Poor’s credit rating (left hand chart, outer red arc) but by January 2012 this proportion had fallen to 52% (left hand chart, inner red sector).
The heart of each chart is a conventional pie chart showing the current distribution of country ratings. Taken in isolation, either one of these would be a reasonable chart. But moving beyond a single pie chart, comparing the Advanced Economies chart to the Emerging Markets chart is not so easy. Edward Tufte’s adage from The Visual Display of Quantitative Information comes to mind: “the only worse design than a pie chart is several of them”. The crime against charting here is made particularly egregious with the choice of a colour scheme for ratings that is not consistent across the two charts!
If that wasn’t bad enough, the design comes right off the rails with the outer charts. These are a form of annular pie chart, but the alignment of each segment is shifted in an attempt to make the pre-crisis figure more readily comparable to the post-crisis figure for each rating. The result is highly confusing: it takes a while to work out exactly what is going on. Messing with the alignment of the outer chart also makes it harder to compare one rating to another. Even the decision to position the 2012 data in the middle and the 2007 data on the outside is a mistake. My eye expects a flow from the centre of the circle outwards rather than from outside in. An informal, if statistically insignificant, survey suggests that I am not the only one with this expectation.
The aim of any data visualisation is to provide easy access to the information. Understanding the IMF report’s chart is just too much work. A simple table of figures would have been easier to understand. But there are also more conventional charts that would do a better job. The chart below is an example of the “small multiples” technique. This involves a grid of similar charts which are readily compared as certain parameters are varied. In this case, scanning the charts horizontally reveals changes through time and vertically the differences between advanced economies and emerging markets.
Sovereign ratings from before the crisis (2007) to now (2012)
Some space could have been saved by restricting the vertical axis to a 0% to 70% range, but with the full 0% to 100% range the proportions for each rating are more readily grasped.
The small multiples chart is a vast improvement on the IMF original, and is a good illustration of the fact that choosing the right chart makes it far easier to visualise the patterns in your data.
* One of the few pie charts I do approve of is this one (I have seen this one in many places, but I am not sure of the original source).
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