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dark_o3 OP t1_izfpdjr wrote

Reply to comment by MrMitchWeaver in [OC] How to spot misleading charts? I would like to hear your opinion on the subject, also any tips design-wise? by dark_o3

I made a seperate comment explaining the idea of the infographic, and yes sometimes it is OK to do it but

#1 is for me the most common way people lie and its not ok in majority of cases.

#2 I would say its only ok for correlation but even here it can mislead users.

#3 maybe there is a better example, the idea is that users should know the full story.

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farsh19 t1_izfswa7 wrote

I agree with both points, depending on the context; although, I would caution against phrases like, "majority of cases" unless you have the data to support such a claim.

These are responsible rules for graphs aimed towards the general public. However these are not good rules to follow in, for example, scientific literature. Hence, the context and intent of a graph is also important.

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shmerham t1_izg5udz wrote

I’m not sure I’d agree that 1 is not ok in most instances. It’s okay if you’re comparing values against a reference, particularly if you’re trying to show outliers.

Take, for example, 100 meter dash times. There’s a huge difference between 10.0 and 9.9 seconds (a body length). …and if you’re trying to compare Usain Bolt’s record against the other fastest times, you would need to truncate the axis to see that his fastest stands out against the next 9 fastest runners which are clustered together.

There just one example but there’s plenty of others.

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[deleted] t1_izg74y0 wrote

[deleted]

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shmerham t1_izggf1c wrote

I agree with you and those scenarios are probably more common, but it seems like it would be incredibly hard to quantify that, so it’s susceptible to cognitive biases.

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