Using compressed axes to display data was literally “How to identify misleading statistics 101” in middle school for us…
It seems fine to you but for the majority of people it’s misleading most people look at the lines and the relative distance between them to make judgment calls. Not literally the entire point of graphs, to visually display information.
This is a well-known effect and is taught in pretty much every major curriculum.
And the above was literally how I was thought to represent data in university. Maximize the areas of interest, make sure to properly label your axes (lest they become misleading), and remember to trim empty space where relevant.
But it appears that proper graphs for science and engineering reports may not be used for representing data to the common man, as it must be assumed that, even for the most simple of graphs, the common man will only look at the funny line, but not the graph itself.
There’s a difference between data display for academia and data display for the general public.
The general public is generally not well educated on understanding the data that’s presented to them. Big change in line up or down regardless of scale means big change. It could be from 100 to 100.8, but if the scale is zoomed in then that could be presented as a +80% change.
And often is and sometimes with the axes removed and shown on the news specifically to be manipulative.
I really don’t understand why I’m being downvoted above… This was literally part of my grade school education on identifying and avoiding misinformation. And later on, around how the general public understands data visualizations. They are largely understood at a glance and taken at face value without reading the axes.
This is a easy way to push misinformation. Not by actually pushing real misinformation but by taking advantage of the general public’s tendency to not read it carefully.
Which is manipulative. Which is why it’s taught in some places as part of the standard educational curriculum…
Using compressed axes to display data was literally “How to identify misleading statistics 101” in middle school for us…
It seems fine to you but for the majority of people it’s misleading most people look at the lines and the relative distance between them to make judgment calls. Not literally the entire point of graphs, to visually display information.
This is a well-known effect and is taught in pretty much every major curriculum.
And the above was literally how I was thought to represent data in university. Maximize the areas of interest, make sure to properly label your axes (lest they become misleading), and remember to trim empty space where relevant.
But it appears that proper graphs for science and engineering reports may not be used for representing data to the common man, as it must be assumed that, even for the most simple of graphs, the common man will only look at the funny line, but not the graph itself.
Yep. You essentially summed up my point.
There’s a difference between data display for academia and data display for the general public.
The general public is generally not well educated on understanding the data that’s presented to them. Big change in line up or down regardless of scale means big change. It could be from 100 to 100.8, but if the scale is zoomed in then that could be presented as a +80% change.
And often is and sometimes with the axes removed and shown on the news specifically to be manipulative.
I really don’t understand why I’m being downvoted above… This was literally part of my grade school education on identifying and avoiding misinformation. And later on, around how the general public understands data visualizations. They are largely understood at a glance and taken at face value without reading the axes.
This is a easy way to push misinformation. Not by actually pushing real misinformation but by taking advantage of the general public’s tendency to not read it carefully.
Which is manipulative. Which is why it’s taught in some places as part of the standard educational curriculum…