A funny pie chart takes the look of hard data and fills it with an everyday truth: the remote is never where you left it, app updates happen mainly to make the red badge go away, and nobody knows what to do while people sing “Happy Birthday”. The joke works because pie charts suggest careful measurement, so a slice of 99 percent feels like scientific proof.
This collection gathers 38 of these charts, redrawn and shared by Bored Panda from ideas posted on humour sites such as GraphJam and Reddit. They cover technology, daily habits, pop culture, school and work. For each one we explain the joke and the real fact or reference behind it, and at the end you will find a few genuine tips on when a pie chart is actually the right tool. None of the numbers come from real surveys; the slices are sized for the punchline.
Why a pie chart makes a good joke
The pie chart has a long and serious history. The Scottish engineer William Playfair is generally credited with the first known pie charts, in his Statistical Breviary of 1801, where he used them to show how the territory of the Turkish Empire was divided among Asia, Europe and Africa. Half a century later Florence Nightingale used a related circular diagram to persuade officials that more soldiers in the Crimean War were dying of preventable disease than of wounds.
Comedy charts borrow that authority. A chart with one huge slice and one sliver reads instantly, the same way a punchline does. Many of the best examples also break the rules on purpose: a single-slice pie, or two halves that say the same thing, makes fun of the format itself.
Charts about phones, screens and the internet
Reasons to update your apps. A thin pink sliver stands for interface tweaks and stability fixes; the rest of the pie is the urge to clear the little red notification badge. App badges are designed to nag, and this chart admits that they work.
Reading text in all caps. Almost the whole chart is the voice in your head screaming. Online, capital letters have been read as shouting since the early days of email and Usenet, which is why most style guides advise against them.
Uses of Google. Spell checking takes nearly half the pie, with adult searches and laziness about typing “.com” sharing much of the rest; finding useful information is a tiny wedge. The joke rings true because many people really do type a word into a search bar just to check how it is spelled.
Netflix. Scrolling for something to watch fills the chart, with a sliver left for actually watching. The joke points at a real problem: Netflix’s own engineers have reportedly written that many viewers give up if they cannot find something appealing quickly, which is why so much effort goes into recommendations.
A “confession” posted by a friend. The tiny blue slice is a genuine announcement; the big orange one is forgetting to log out of Facebook. The chart pokes fun at the old prank of posting embarrassing status updates from someone else’s unlocked account, not at anyone’s identity.
Who finds you on Facebook. Old classmates and colleagues you would rather avoid split almost the whole pie, leaving a sliver for actual friends. Search by name made it easy for long-lost acquaintances to reappear, for better or worse.
Why we use IMDb. Checking a new film or an actor’s past roles barely registers next to the main reason: settling an argument. IMDb began in 1990 as a fan-run film database and is now owned by Amazon.
Charts about everyday habits
When you cannot hear someone. Asking them to repeat it or moving closer get thin slices, shouting “What?!” gets a bit more, and laughing and hoping it was not a question takes the rest. Anyone who has tried to talk in a noisy bar will recognise the strategy.
Telling people you are colour blind. A tiny slice say “that’s cool”; everyone else points at the nearest object and asks what colour it is. Red-green colour blindness is common, affecting roughly one in twelve men and around one in 200 women of Northern European descent.
When people sing “Happy Birthday” to you. The whole pie is one awkward slice: sitting there with no idea what to do. The censored word in the label is part of the original chart. The song itself, adapted from an older tune, was under disputed copyright until a US court ruling in 2015.
Forgetting someone’s name. Guessing right or wrong gets two slim slices; most of the time we just wait for somebody else to say it. Memory researchers note that names are harder to recall than other facts about a person, so this is a very common lapse.
Phrases that cause fear. “I’m sorry, but…” and a worrying test result are outweighed by four words: “Can I talk to you?” A vague request with no context lets the imagination fill in the worst.
Waiting for toast. Fetching butter or tidying up get small wedges; staring at the toaster wins. A typical pop-up toaster takes only a couple of minutes, which is just long enough to feel endless.
Writing with your left hand. Comments about creativity and that left-handed relative appear, but the biggest slice is the question “Are you left-handed?” About one person in ten is left-handed, so lefties hear it a lot.
“There’s no food at home.” The chart’s answer: there is food, just no junk food. It also leaves room for checking that cabinet, a whispered “diet”, and a parent arriving with takeaway.
Time spent using Tupperware. Storing fresh food barely shows, storing forgotten leftovers takes a wedge, and hunting for the right lid fills the rest. The containers were invented by American chemist Earl Tupper in the 1940s and made famous by home sales parties.
Where the remote goes. Under, beside and inside the sofa all get slices, but the largest share is still unknown. Remote controls are small, dark and used in low light while people get up and down, the perfect recipe for disappearing.
Questions people lie about. Age and weight get modest slices; the giant one is “Have you been flossing?” Dentists hear the optimistic answer so often that it has become a running joke in the profession.
When people say “no pun intended”. A small slice follows a genuine accident; the rest follow a pun that was entirely deliberate. The phrase usually works as a wink that draws attention to the joke.
Charts about music, film and pop culture
People who think I am beautiful. Half is Mum, half is James Blunt. The joke borrows the British singer’s 2005 hit “You’re Beautiful”, which topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Two types of people. Almost everyone hates the sound of their own recorded voice; the exception is Morgan Freeman, whose deep, calm narration made him one of the most recognisable voices in film. Our voices sound different on recordings because we normally hear ourselves partly through the bones of the skull.
What women’s magazines contain. Half the pie says you are beautiful as you are; the other half advertises losing 20 pounds in four weeks. The chart sums up a long-running criticism of mixed messages in lifestyle publishing. Rapid-weight-loss promises deserve scepticism; anyone considering a big change should talk to a doctor.
Japan. The chart has two labels, “Japan” and “Also Japan”, in red and white, the colours of the Japanese flag, the Hinomaru, a red disc on a white field. It is the shortest joke on the page.
What’s in a pop song. “Baby”, “ooh” and “yeah” take most of the pie, with a little wedge for actual lyrics. Repetition is not just laziness: hooks that repeat simple words are easy to remember and sing along to.
Pitbull songs. The slices go to “Mr. Worldwide”, “Dale”, random Spanish words, the names of big cities and a long excited shout. The Miami rapper really does call himself Mr. Worldwide, and “dale”, roughly “go for it”, is his famous catchphrase.
Why Scooby-Doo villains get arrested. Almost never for a real crime; almost always for dressing up and scaring people. The cartoon, first aired in 1969, famously ends with a mask pulled off and a culprit complaining about those meddling kids.
Waking Lady Gaga from a nap. Shaking her, setting an alarm or using ice water lose out to “p-p-p-poke her face”, a pun on her 2008 hit “Poker Face” and its stuttering hook.
What Voldemort doesn’t have. Friends and family get slivers, while a nose takes the rest. In the Harry Potter films the Dark Lord’s flat, snake-like face was created with digital effects over Ralph Fiennes’s real features.
How Lady Gaga likes her steak. Well done, rare and medium rare are swamped by “raw raw raw”. It nods to both the “rah-rah” chant in her song “Bad Romance” and the dress made of raw meat she wore to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.
Spanish phrases I remember. “Me gusta” dominates, with a sliver for important things. The phrase, meaning “I like it”, became a huge meme through a rage-comic face around 2010, which is why so many people remember it better than their school vocabulary.
Charts about school, work and family
Thoughts in maths class. The two halves are mild-curse versions of “what is this” and “what is that”. Maths anxiety is real and well studied; the good news is that research suggests it can be reduced with practice and supportive teaching.
The customer is always… A small green slice reads “right”; a large purple one uses a rude word for the rest. The slogan is often attributed to retail pioneers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge and Marshall Field, and retail workers have been grumbling about it ever since.
Who talks about “back in my day”. Old people get a small slice; the rest goes to 90s kids. Nostalgia for the 1990s, from dial-up tones to video rental shops, became an online genre of its own.
“Mom, can I…?” The answer fills the entire chart: no. Like several charts here, it is a one-slice joke, which makes the whole point of a pie chart, comparing parts, look ridiculous.
What a bachelor’s degree does. Helping you get a job is a hairline; looking nice on the wall is everything else. The data disagree with the joke: in most countries, graduates on average have higher employment rates and earnings than non-graduates.
Benefits of being a father. Raising a child with good values gets a solid quarter; playing with Lego again gets the rest. Lego’s interlocking brick dates from 1958, so many fathers do get to rediscover their own childhood toys.
What seven years of university gave me. Essay skills, critical thinking and living on a tiny food budget share slices, but student debt takes most of the pie. Student loans are a major financial burden in countries such as the US and UK, which keeps this joke current.
Fifteen-page essay due in twelve hours. Facebook takes the largest share, followed by crying, with tiny wedges for widening the margins, inserting quote boxes and, at last, writing. The typo “cass” in the original label only adds to the panic.
When a real pie chart is a good idea
Statisticians tend to be wary of pie charts, and with reason. Research at AT&T Bell Laboratories found that people judge angles and areas less accurately than lengths, so it is hard to tell a 23 percent slice from a 27 percent one or to compare two pies side by side. That weakness is exactly what the joke charts exploit: they only use slices that are either tiny or enormous.
If you are making a chart for real, a few rules help:
- Use a pie only for parts of one whole that add up to 100 percent.
- Keep it to a few slices. Beyond five or six, readers have to rely on colour keys and the chart stops working.
- Pies work best near simple fractions, such as a quarter or a half, where the eye can judge the share easily.
- Switch to a bar chart when values are close together or you need to compare several groups.
- Label slices directly with the percentage rather than forcing readers to match colours to a legend.
Or, of course, use one to prove that the remote really has vanished into another dimension.
Sources: Bored Panda: funny pie charts (chart images); Wikipedia: Pie chart; original chart ideas credited to clacktastic, endlessorigami.com, SWAGCT, KingTomburger, AgainstBieber, GraphJam, GraphJam, andyman6, lolover, weebs86, grantly0711, 2ndchair, MissContrary, GraphJam, mashabedda, cheezburger.com, pelo860.
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