z46\doc\web\2000\11\piechar.txt


arthur hu:
I was a summer co-op intern at Hewlett Packard in 1978 
where I came up with the 
first BASIC code to do cross-hatched pie charts. It's the 
most difficult of the basic business-graphics charts,
especially the 3D exploded pie. It's worth a lot of wow
for the Powerpoint generation which is so neccesary in the
21st century world class skills.


Drawing a pie chart requires converting all of your numbers
to a % of the whole, then converting to a fraction of 360
degrees, possibly including sorting of the values or figuring
how to place the slices so that labels will fit, etc. Understanding
the code neccesary to do a rotated cross-hatch is college or 
graduate level computer science.


This is
way behind the comprehension level of a kindergartener, it would
take a very solid 6th grader who is comfortable with circular
geometry to understand how to even construct a valid pie
chart. The average adult with 2 years of college would be hard
put to demonstrate converting raw numbers into a properly
drawn pie chart.


My 3rd grader homework was to do a bar chart of how many
of each candy he got home. 


2+2 = 4 is being supplanted by "draw a pie chart" showing
which candy you got the most of.


-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Olive [mailto:tlolive@accessone.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 10:31 PM
To: wa-ed-deform@egroups.com
Subject: [wa-ed-deform] PIE CHARTS




Recently, I spoke with a mother from Georgia who noticed that her son
was drawing a lot of pie charts at home.  He would draw various objects
in the segments...house, dog, etc., but could not explain why he was
doing it.  (He's in kindergarten.)


The pie chart has cropped up in WA State schools as well.


It sounded like a psychological assesment exercise, so I contacted Bev
Eakman, author of "Cloning of the American Mind".  This is her response:


"Dear Terry:


The pie chart in this instance is analogous to the concentric circles
drawn by first-year teacher education students in their ed psych class
to demonstrate how much of their thinking (relative importance) is
devoted to various segments/categories of their lives -- such as family,


religion, play, shopping, etc.  The psychology teacher usually points
out at some point that the bull's eye, or most important aspect of
anyone's life is (surprise) himself.  In other words, the world revolves


around ME.


For a child as young as you are describing, and given that he does not
know the reason for this exercise, it is a good bet that it is an
assessment tool for discovering what and who is most important in his
life.  From there, they may try to determine probable values, but just
as likely, they will use this as a self-esteem tool, pointing out both
subtly and overtly that the most important thing in the "pie" is
himself.  Once the child has internalized (accepted without question)
the notion that he is the center of his universe, it is easier to get
around principles involving religion, parental authority, etc...


I hope this is helpful in responding to your question.


Best regards,


Bev Eakman
Author
Cloning of the American Mind"








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