Pareto Chart Generator

This calculator sorts all entered categories from largest to smallest before computing cumulative percentages, so which categories land in the "vital few" and which land in the "trivial many" depends on every category's count relative to the others, not just the one you changed. Raising a mid-sized category's count enough can push it past a larger category in the ranking, which reshuffles Top Category, Vital Few Count, and Vital Few Cumulative % all at once.

After sorting categories from largest to smallest count, this calculator walks down the list adding each category's percentage of the total until the running total reaches 80% -- every category up to and including that point is the vital few (Vital Few Count), and everything after it is the trivial many (Trivial Many). The classic Pareto principle argument is that fixing just the vital few typically resolves the large majority of your total problem volume.

This calculator only includes a category in the analysis if its count is greater than zero -- a category left at its zero default is treated as "not tracked" rather than "zero defects reported," so it doesn't appear in Categories Analyzed, the chart, or the cumulative percentage calculation. Enter an actual count (even a small nonzero one) for any category you want reflected in the analysis.

No — the calculator sorts all categories by count (largest first) before computing anything, so it doesn't matter whether you enter your largest problem in Category 1 or Category 6. The only thing that determines the ranking and the vital-few grouping is each category's numeric count relative to the others.