Pie or Lie

Every round presents a set of bar and pie charts built from one dataset. First click the chart that represents the data faithfully. Then, for each remaining chart, tag the specific trick it uses to mislead before you reveal the answers.

• Score for finding the honest chart and again for each deception you name correctly.
• Tricks include truncated baselines, misleading 3D tilt and skewed proportions.
• A run spans several rounds with a running total.

• Desktop: click a chart to call it honest, then use the drop-down on each liar to tag its flaw.
• Phone & tablet: tap to select and use the drop-downs, fully touch-friendly.

• Daily: one shared set of rounds seeded by the date.
• Practice: fresh randomized rounds any time.

• Check where the y-axis starts before trusting any bar comparison.
• A tilted or 3D pie almost always exaggerates the front slice.

Pie or Lie trains you to read graphs critically by spotting the ways a chart can deceive.

• Skills: data literacy, misleading graphs, critical reading of charts
• Best for: roughly grades 6–12 (ages 11+)
• For parents & teachers: spotting deceptive charts.

Picking the chart that represents a dataset faithfully, then diagnosing the rest, is applied statistical graphics.

Building every chart from the same data is the original constraint.

That is what makes it a fair test. When the numbers are identical, every difference between the charts is a presentation choice, so the question stops being which figure is true and becomes which encoding tells the truth about it — which is the only useful version of the question.

Pie or Lie is a chart-deception spotting game that trains you to read graphs critically. It's an original free browser game built for PlayPendium.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.