4 ms·

I'm not super convinced by this study. The examples show Fox News-levels of graph manipulation, i.e. maximum manipulation. This is clearly done in an attempt

I'm not super convinced by this study. The examples show Fox News-levels of graph manipulation, i.e. maximum manipulation. This is clearly done in an attempt to communicate a particular message. If you read the questions as "What message was the author trying to communicate?", which is reasonable, then the study could show that you were willing to repeat back the author's intended message. In this sense, you weren't fooled by the graph - you understood exactly the message it was intended to convey. A truncated graph is, in my opinion, completely appropriate for data where the relative differences or trends in data points is more relevant to the message than the absolute values - a temperature chart, say (where the absolute values are pretty much meaningless). If you took data of a clearly relative type rather than a clearly absolute type, would you be able to say that viewers were misled in the exact opposite direction? That would be interesting.

gus_massa 6y ago
A cropped line graph may be fine. In particular, in a temperature graph, where should we put the horizontal axis, at 0°C, 0°F or 0K? The problem are truncated bar graph. Using a truncated bar graph is never a good idea.
manicdee 6y ago
Regardless of the type of graph, it's important to understand whether a difference of 5 units between one measure and the next is meaningful. For example if you are measuring the length of optical fibre and the difference between the lengths of fibres is 5cm over 100km, is that important in the context? You'll already lose several metres of length in various loops and coils that are important for reliable function of that 100km length of fibre. On the other hand when cutting frames for doors, the difference of a couple of millimetres over the two metre length of the side of the frame can make the difference between passing or failing the building envelope pressurisation test. On the gripping hand when I'm shooting an arrow 50m to a target, what's of interest to me is not the distance from me to the arrow but the tiny variances in distance from the arrow to the bullseye. So measuring the vector from me to the arrow is pointless and the centimetre or two difference in length of those vectors is meaningless.

gus_massa 6y ago

A cropped line graph may be fine. In particular, in a temperature graph, where should we put the horizontal axis, at 0°C, 0°F or 0K? The problem are truncated bar graph. Using a truncated bar graph is never a good idea.

manicdee 6y ago

Regardless of the type of graph, it's important to understand whether a difference of 5 units between one measure and the next is meaningful. For example if you are measuring the length of optical fibre and the difference between the lengths of fibres is 5cm over 100km, is that important in the context? You'll already lose several metres of length in various loops and coils that are important for reliable function of that 100km length of fibre. On the other hand when cutting frames for doors, the difference of a couple of millimetres over the two metre length of the side of the frame can make the difference between passing or failing the building envelope pressurisation test. On the gripping hand when I'm shooting an arrow 50m to a target, what's of interest to me is not the distance from me to the arrow but the tiny variances in distance from the arrow to the bullseye. So measuring the vector from me to the arrow is pointless and the centimetre or two difference in length of those vectors is meaningless.