Blah. There's a prevalence of bad visualizations like this that we eat up just because it looks pretty and it has gradients. In the first bar graph, the incre

Blah. There's a prevalence of bad visualizations like this that we eat up just because it looks pretty and it has gradients. In the first bar graph, the increases in year aren't consistent even though the spacing between the bars and widths of bars are consistent. That makes it deceptive to the eye about the overall trend of the national debt. Not only that, a downward pointing bar graph with the color red usually indicates some sort of negative number or amount in opposition to the the graph pointing upward and colored blue. But it ends up that they're both debt, but measured in different ways, and not at all in opposition to each other! Visualizations are basically summaries of data. To have to fill in those spaces in time with my mind mentally is work that I shouldn't be doing.