 Pie charts are served up daily in newspapers, on television, in magazines, and in math and social studies lessons. They are also known as circle graphs and are easy to interpret if you learn how to identify the parts. In a pie chart or circle graph, the first thing you need to read is the title. This will be in bigger, darker print, and is usually above the graph. There may or may not be some explanation following the title. If there is, be sure to read it completely to help you understand what is being explained. After the title, look for the labels or the key like a legend on a map. These tell what each piece of the pie represents. A label might be directly on the section of pie. The labels might appear as a key. Sometimes the key will use colors, but sometimes shading will be used to show the different sections. The third part you will need to identify is the source. The source is usually found at the bottom of the pie chart. It simply tells you from where the information for the graph came. Now that you have identified the parts of the graph, think about how the pieces fit together. The whole pie equals 100% of the topic. The size of each section depends on what part of 100 it is. For example, if you want to show that half the people in a community vote, you would think of half of 100 or 50%. Likewise, the remaining 50 out of 100 would be labeled to see the full picture. Perhaps 25% of the people don't want to vote and 25% are ineligible. The result would fill up 100% of the pie. The graph may have the percent figures as part of the label to help the readers summarize the data. In the following graph, 100% of the pie means the entire 2.13 trillion budget proposed by President Bush for the 2002 budget. Each section of the pie represents how many dollars went to each category. When you add all the sections together, they equal 2.128, rounded to 2.13 trillion. In this case, the actual amounts are used rather than the percent of each amount. In the following pie charts, percentages are used. 100% represents all the people polled. You have completed this activity on pie charts.