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composition family
pyramid
Triangular layered shape — population pyramids or ranked hierarchies.
Two distinct uses: (a) demographic pyramids with horizontal bars per age cohort, mirrored by gender; (b) hierarchical pyramids ranking layers from broad base to narrow top. Both share the triangular silhouette.
When to use
Demographics: age × gender. Hierarchies: market layers, audience tiers, funnel stages.
When NOT to use
Process is sequential and tapering (use funnel — typically rotated and time-ordered).
Rhetorical roles
- distribute
- decompose
Variants & related
Required primitives
- has_data_labels
Optional primitives
- has_legend
- has_axis_titles
Common anti-patterns
- mismatched-encoding
Disambiguation rules
- Layers stack vertically with widths varying — typically widest at bottom.
- If oriented horizontally and showing dropoff between sequential stages, that is funnel.
- If two halves mirror each other across a vertical centre line (M/F), it is a population pyramid.