Pie chart:
It is a circular graph divided into slices to represent a share of each category that is measured/observed in the data.
Strategy to write the pie chart:
- For an introduction, use specific vocabulary for a pie chart, such as percentage distribution, comprises of, proportions, accounts for, and represents. Rephrase the description or chart title and include the given time frame.
- For the overview, highlight the largest and smallest proportions in the overview. In the case of multiple pie charts, you must write about all key features of all charts. For more details, refer to writing Task 1.
- Planning before writing body paragraphs is essential because it is tricky to organize the paragraphs and comparisons for pie charts. On the other hand, you have greater flexibility when writing different sentence structures. Refer to the “Vocabulary for Pie chart section to know more about different sentence types.”
Vocabulary for Pie chart:
For showing examples of vocabulary, the example used is as follows:
“The chart shows government expenditure on different categories such as Research and development, healthcare, education and specialty programs, and transport.”
General Synonyms:
- Segment: A part or section of the pie chart.
- Slice: Another term for a segment.
- Portion: The part of the pie chart that represents a specific category.
- Percentage: The value representing each segment’s proportion of the whole.
- Proportion: It is similar to percentage; it is used when representing ratios or parts of the whole pie chart.
- Category: The label or name given to each segment.
All of the above are synonyms for showing segments in a pie chart.
Descriptive Phrases
- Largest segment: The most significant part of the pie chart.
- Smallest segment: The smallest part of the pie chart.
- Accounts for It describes a segment’s percentage (e.g., “Education accounts for 25% of the total government expenditure.”).
- Constitutes: Another way to describe a segment’s portion (e.g., “Healthcare constitutes 15% of share in government expenses”).
- Represents: Shows what a segment stands for (e.g., “The blue slice represents transport costs, which has 23% expenses share out of the total money the government spends”).
- Makes up: Similar to accounts for (e.g., “Utilities make up 10% of the pie chart”).
- Comprises: Indicates what the segment includes (e.g., “The red segment comprises taxes and fees”).
- Dominates: When one segment is significantly larger than the others (e.g., “Housing costs dominate the amount of money government spends with total 56% shares”).
- Minor segment: Smaller segments in comparison to others.
Comparative Terms
- Compared to : Used to compare different segments (e.g., “Healthcare is 10% compared to education’s 25%”).
- In contrast to : Highlighting differences between segments (e.g., “In contrast to leisure, transportation has a larger share with 35%and 45% respectively”).
- Similar to : Showing similarity between segments (e.g., “Transport costs are similar to utilities in shares which is approximately 30%”).
- Larger than: Used for direct comparison (e.g., “With a difference of 5%, Education’s expenses are larger than Research and Development”).
- Smaller than: Another direct comparison (e.g., “Entertainment is smaller than healthcare”).
Dynamic Terms
- Increased/Decreased: Used if the pie chart shows changes over time (e.g., “Healthcare expenses have increased by 5%”).
- Rose/Fell: Another way to describe changes (e.g., “The portion for expenditure on healthcare rose by 3%”).
- Grew/Shrank: Indicates growth or reduction (e.g., “Transport costs grew over the year with a total share of 30%.”).
- Fluctuated: Describes variability (e.g., “The entertainment segment fluctuated slightly between 25% and 30% over the years”).
- Remained steady: Indicates no change (e.g., “Utilities remained steady at 10%”).
Synonyms for common proportions in pie chart:
- 50% -half of (e.g., the Government spends half of equating to 50% of its total budget on healthcare only.)
- 25%- a quarter of (e.g., the pie chart shows that a quarter of total budget is spent on transport costs)
- 75%- three quarters (Three-quarters of the total expenses, which is 75%, is taken up by education)
- 66.67% – two-thirds (Two-thirds of the total expenses, around 66.67%, is spent on research and development.)
- 20%- one fifth (The transport has accounted One-fifth of the expenses, translating to 20%.)