Question

Statistics

1. Find two examples of current (within last five years) graphical misrepresentations of data. Create a Word document containing an image of each graph and a paragraph explaining how each graph misrepresents data.

Answer 1

Misleading Graphs in Real Life: Overview

Misleading graphs are sometimes deliberately misleading and sometimes it’s just a case of people not understanding the data behind the graph they create. The “classic” types of misleading graphs include cases where:

• The Vertical scale is too big or too small, or skips numbers, or doesn’t start at zero.
• The graph isn’t labeled properly.
• Data is left out.

But some real life misleading graphs go above and beyond the classic types. Some are intended to mislead, others are intended to shock. And in some cases, well-meaning individuals just got it all plain wrong. These are some of my favorite recent-history misleading graphs from real life.

Misleading Graphs: The Missing Baseline.

You might be thinking that the graph on the right shows The Times makes double the sales of The Daily Telegraph. But take a closer look at the scale and you’ll see although The Times does make more sales, it’s only beating the competition by about 10%.

Fox News Misleading Graphs.

Here’s another, designed to show that after a small drop in unemployment it went up and up in the Obama administration.

Note that the value for November (8.6) has not been plotted correctly. It’s placed at the 9.0 position. That’s not the only problem with this graph. It’s been plotted to look like there’s a steep incline when in fact, the overall employment trend is pretty stable at around 9%.

Here’s what the graph should look like if it had been plotted correctly. See the difference?