Normally, pie charts are circular and each piece of data is shown as a slice of a whole.
However, for some purposes, it makes more sense to display the same kind of data as a rectangle divided up with vertical lines, with each horizontal "slice" of the rectangle representing a piece of the data.
It would look like one rectangle cut into multiple slices along one dimension. For example, suppose my data was different types of transportation used in the United States, and the data was the following, then the plot might look like the ASCII depiction below the data.
Bicycle,25%
Plane,25%
Car,50%
________________________________________________
|_Bicycle__|____Plane___|_________Car___________|
Note that the intent of the above depiction is to have one long rectangle cut into 3 pieces. Two are 25% of the total rectangle and one is 50% of the rectangle.
Is there a word for this kind of "rectangular" pie chart?
Best Answer
I think what you're asking about is a bar chart or bar graph (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_chart ).
Update:
In one of the comments above, Jesse suggested stacked bar chart. Googling for corresponding images results in a great number of exactly the type of chart you are asking about being displayed.
Second update:
Just for the sake of completeness, I've reinstated a link that someone posted (and then deleted) to the following Wikipedia description of a further type of rectangular chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping