Question

Imagine you’ve just taken a job at EconomiCorp, Inc., and your first assignment is to draw a pie chart of their customer satisfaction survey results.

The results variable contains an array of objects that represent the survey responses.

var results = [
  {name: "Satisfied", count: 1043, color: "lightblue"},
  {name: "Neutral", count: 563, color: "lightgreen"},
  {name: "Unsatisfied", count: 510, color: "pink"},
  {name: "No comment", count: 175, color: "silver"}
];

To draw a pie chart, we draw a number of pie slices, each made up of an arc and a pair of lines to the center of that arc. We can compute the angle taken up by each arc by dividing a full circle (2π) by the total number of responses and then multiplying that number (the angle per response) by the number of people who picked a given choice.

<canvas width="200" height="200"></canvas>
<script>
  var cx = document.querySelector("canvas").getContext("2d");
  var total = results.reduce(function(sum, choice) {
    return sum + choice.count;
  }, 0);
  // Start at the top
  var currentAngle = -0.5 * Math.PI;
  results.forEach(function(result) {
    var sliceAngle = (result.count / total) * 2 * Math.PI;
    cx.beginPath();
    // center=100,100, radius=100
    // from current angle, clockwise by slice's angle
    cx.arc(100, 100, 100,
           currentAngle, currentAngle + sliceAngle);
    currentAngle += sliceAngle;
    cx.lineTo(100, 100);
    cx.fillStyle = result.color;
    cx.fill();
  });
</script>

This draws the following chart:

But a chart that doesn’t tell us what it means isn’t very helpful. We need a way to draw text to the canvas.

This is a book about getting computers to do what you want them to do. Computers are about as common as screwdrivers today, but they contain a lot more hidden complexity and thus are harder to operate and understand. To many, they remain alien, slightly threatening things.