How to Lie with Data Visualization - Joshua Mbogo
A New Post
Out of the list of ways to lie with data visualization almost all of them had a overlying theme. The main way to lie is to skew or misrepresent data through the use of poroptions and illogical graphs. When thinking about the Y-axis putting the y-axis in a scale that is not proper for the data being discuss will leave the data either showing an exaggerate or underwhelming result. Additionally, in some cases graphs must use a logarithmic scale and if the wrong log is used such a scneario can also occur. Another thing I noticed was using the wrong kind of data difference between actual and cumlative data will produce a false sense of increase if the user doesn’t properly digest the graph and its content. With a cumlative graph one must focus on the change of the slope and not the actual value of the slope will in a normal traditional graph looking at the specific values gives you information of how the data is change over the x-axis (which in the example presented in the article was time). Enter text in Markdown. Use the toolbar above, or click the ? button for formatting help.