Which chart would be most suitable to show the proportion of categories within a whole?

• A. Pie chart
• B. Bar chart
• C. Line chart
• D. Histogram

Answer: (A)

Showing how parts add up to a whole is best conveyed with a pie chart. A pie chart divides a circle into slices where each slice’s size corresponds to that category’s share of the total, making it easy to see which categories dominate and how each one relates to the whole. Line charts are for changes over time, histograms show distributions of a variable, and bar charts compare values across categories but don’t emphasize the idea of a single total being partitioned into proportions as clearly as a pie chart does. Pie charts work well with a small number of categories and a clean, 2D presentation to keep the focus on relative shares.