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OK so this chart really bugs me: https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/TV+Categories.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/TV+Categories.png Why is the bottom l

• steve-howard 14y ago
  Because it intentionally overstates their point?
• mtigas 14y ago
  It's still a regular linearly-scaled chart, so I don't think it's too confusing. Funny enough, I plugged this into Google Docs to see if I could re-scale to give you a comparison of the given chart vs a 0-based, 5-unit-interval chart and it looks like that's actually what they used to generate the chart. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag2TNlAslc4GdFdDaWtlNVpZajRWR0Z0LTRMN2ZYUEE https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag2TNlAslc4GdFd... Apparently the automatic scaling gives you the 8-based scale you see in their post. (And apparently you can't manually re-scale a Google Docs chart.) Using "stack" mode (I don't actually know what this option does for a single-series chart like this) gives you a 0-based, 10-unit-interval chart. (Again, not sure if you can adjust this to any other unit-scale.) Slightly different scale, but I don't think it's a significant difference (though the "television" portion does appear slightly smaller in the automatic scale). Charts like these are always susceptible to scale-skew and perception, and even simple charts (like this) can be debated on those subjective measures.
• TwoBit 14y ago
  Whenever I see graphs like that, I write the page off as being advertising rather than science.