I have a different complaint. The Y axis should be logarithmic. What we really care about is the reciprocal of the value being plotted: not operations per sec

I have a different complaint. The Y axis should be logarithmic. What we really care about is the reciprocal of the value being plotted: not operations per second, but microseconds per operation. On a log scsle the curves of a function and its reciprocal are just mirror images, so it's easy to visualize one from the other. As for the truncated Y-axis -- always, always, always read the axis labels before interpreting the graph. (Log scales can't reach zero, so there's no way to escape this when using them.)