3 ms·
> nonzero axis is borderline fraud This is an outrageously reductive meme that has long outstripped its actual usefulness and needs to die. The axis and scale
by Analemma_ 2y ago
> nonzero axis is borderline fraud
This is an outrageously reductive meme that has long outstripped its actual usefulness and needs to die. The axis and scale should represent the useful range of values. For example, if your body temperature in Fahrenheit moves more than 5 degrees in either direction, you're having a medical emergency, but on a graph that starts from zero, this would barely be visible. Plotting body temperature from zero would conceal much more than it reveals, which is the opposite of what dataviz is supposed to do.
- matkoniecz 2y agothis is a very rare case where nonzero axis is justifiable nevertheless >99% of cases where I am encountering nonzero axis it is misleading > The axis and scale should represent the useful range of values this should not be confused for "range of values present in data" often actually useful visualization would show that value barely changed - but it makes for more truthful and boring news, so is avoided
- Gormo 2y agoAny visualization that represents variation around a baseline value should use the baseline value as its axis, whether the baseline is zero or not.
- teddyh 2y agoThe only reasonable zero-value for temperature is 0K, which unfortunately leads to unreadable graphs. (All other temperature scales are completely arbitrary.) So for the specific case of temperatures, it is in fact completely reasonable to have a nonzero axis. But most graphs are not temperatures.