Pie Chart - Percentage & Value Display

[Tired_of_Taxes]

I was trying to create a pie chart in excel for some
calculations and noticed that excel was creating the pie
charts for say - amount taxed on earnings - in this
fashion:

The percentage of taxes calculated is: Taxes / (Taxes +
Earnings) and
Earnings are: Earnings / ( Taxes + Earnings)

I understand why it is doing this, since i'm using a pie
chart which needs to sum to a 100% but this distorts the
taxed amount, since it is including it in the
denominator.
What i want to see is a realistic number - taxes as a
percentage of earnings. So the formula for taxes that
should be used to graph is: Taxes / Earnings

So the questions are:
1. Am i making the right request mathematically? i've
convinced myself in both directions based on the
situation!!!
2. Is a pie chart the right chart to do this, or is there
another chart? If you say a pie chart, both the
percentage and the value of each segment should display
correctly.

 

[Jon Peltier]

Think about the math for a second. Basically, you should be including
numbers in your pie that add to 100%. So your two categories are Taxes
Paid, and the rest (i.e. Total Earnings minus Taxes paid).

- Jon