pie graphs+heat maps

[#1]

Hello everyone, 

   As a marine biologist, I recently stumbled across a visual presentation of coral reef data that I really like (see attachment). In it, you will see various pie graphs in which the individual wedges are essentially heat maps to show relative levels of certain parameters. I would like to adapt this for my own research, and I THINK it cn be done with Graph Builder, though not as a heat map, per se. Here is my idea: say I want four pie wedges representing four response variables (A, B, C, and D). The size is unimportant, so I will give each a value of 0.25 so that they occupy equal areas. I realize I can overlay color, so I created a "color" column and assigned values for the four response variables, but then my graph didn't change accordingly. I tried value coloring and labeling, but no luck. I feel like I just set up my table wrong! Any suggestions?? Thanks!

[#2]

While this solution (and many of the other contributions) are quite innovative, I have to say that I don't find the pie charts very useful at all (it reminds me of the Tufte quote, which I'll paraphrase since I can't remember exactly where he said it:  "the only thing worse than one stupid pie chart is more than one stupid pie chart).  Doughnuts, as usual, are better than pie charts, but I think bar graphs work much better in this case.  With the multiple comparisons across the 4 dimensions you have a couple of issues:  first is the ordering of the pieces and the second is the size of the pieces.  It is easier to order bars than slices of pie and the sizes are also much better compared with bars.  There may well be other displays that work even better, but I really don't see these pie charts as easy to decipher at all.

[#3]

I agree with you on that point, nevertheless, that a request from my stakeholders  .... pie charts ( and even worst, radar charts)  it is !