does not provide solutions to issues 
only focuses on past data pareto charts only show qualitative data that can be observed they cannot be used to represent quantitative data example of pareto analysisthe department of ecology for the state of washington performed a study to identify why oil spills happen it gathered information on 209 oil spill incidents including an internal peer review of the causes and factored in input from responsible parties in total the department of ecology identified dozens of causes for oil spills it identified the primary causes as the total number of explanations above six represents a little bit more than 20 of the total causes identified 29 total causal factors however these six causes cumulatively were responsible for 71 149 of 209 cases of oil spills identified in this example of pareto analysis only a few data items are primarily responsible for most causes of oil spills 