Simplifying a complex pie chart

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrew Knapp via AccessMonster.com
  • Start date Start date
A

Andrew Knapp via AccessMonster.com

I'm having a problem grasping something to do with the chart wizard(Though
I'm sure there's some simple solution that I'm just not seeing).
I've created a Query that takes the count of people in a certian subject
and displays them on a pie chart. The problem is, there are so many
classes, they can't possibly fit on one chart. The legend only displays 6
classes, and the pie chart shows 5 big ppieces, and a whole mess of tinier
classes; subjects that only a few students take.
I was wondering if there was any way for me to take all the tiny classes
that are less than 1% of the total number of students and put them into an
"Other" category.
I've been prodding at this for the past few weeks, and I'm sure there's an
answer so simple it will make me smack my head for it(I've been known to do
those quite often).
 
Are the 5 big pieces always the same subject? Do you have a table where each
subject is a unique record?
 
Each subject is unique yes, but there are multiple people coming in for
each subject. Like only 5 people for Gardening 101, but several hundred
coming in for English 101. EN-101 and 4 other classes have alot of
students in them, so their pieces on the pie chart are quite large. There
are about 100 or so other classes that have 5 or 6 coming in for them.
 
I would add a field to your table of unique subjects. Name the field
"PieGroup" and set the values for the larger subjects to their subject name.
Then set all the smaller subjects to something like "All Other Subjects".
You can then use this field for your pie slices.
 
That would work, but it's more working around the problem. It's assuming
that the big classes will always be big classes. If, in the long run, that
changes, I would have to go back and alter the data. Is that the only way
of doing it?
 
Do you always know that it will be 5 subjects or is there a rule that you
could apply?
 
If there was a Top Five thing available, that would work, but I can't say
for certain which would be the top five on any given time period.
 
You could get the top five by creating a totals query that groups by Subject
and counts Subject. Then create another query that selects the TOP 5 from
this totals query. Add this query to your pie chart's record source with a
join that includes all records from your original query/table. Add the
Subject field from the totals query and use an expression like
Nz(Top5Subject,"All Other Subjects")
Use this column to group by and chart.
 
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