I think TECHNICALLY time Warner still purchased AOL. Even though that was one of the worst business decisions even know to man.

If the units are different (e.g. a percentage and a number, or a number and a currency), a second scale on the same axis is basically a must. Also, I can't recall ever seeing a real graph break this rule and put two scales on the same axis when the units were the same. As such, calling it out in this guide might do more harm than good.

Quite good! In the last example though, I think you should make the big picture a downward trend. So add a few smaller bars to the right of the cherrypicked ones, etc.

This sub is overloaded with bad data viz and there are many other problems that aren’t as obvious as these are.. it’s really easy for untrained people to make bad graphs that look good.

The other big issue is a lack of data skepticism.. even if you know best practices, if you use bad data it’s still a bad data viz.

Unsurprisingly the posters always get pissed when you explain where they are making their mistakes.. more interested in getting an upvoted than learning the art.

If the unit is the same but the magnitude is very different it does not make sense to use the same axis.

Take housing growth YoY, unemployment, loan delinquency, labor force participation rate, yield curve.

These are all expressed in percentage points but they have wildly different ranges and magnitudes. It would make no sense to use one single axis for two or more of those.

As I said in my first comment. If the series justify the double axis chart it makes sense to use it.

Creator needs to be honest and consumer needs to be vigilant. Same as it ever was.

Coinbase was a DPO and by this metric (cash raised throught the IPO) would be US$0m.

Part of the point with 3 is that it assumes whoever made the chart has access to the data going back much further, meaning they knew the last few years are not representative of the longer trend. By only showing the last few years anyway, they're deliberately misleading people.

Yes, you can look at the Y-axis. But if you think that just by having the Y-axis values available removes all misleading, then no suppression of zero is ever misleading. For instance, by your logic the OP's first graph is not misleading as the values are there.

Regarding the Fed graph, the thing that you named as anomaly is amplified when you suppress the zero. When you don't the effect of the stimulus is put more context of how much effect it actually had on people's disposable income.

How about a bar graph with split Y axis?

Notice how many were just before big bubbles bursting.

But my article is more convincing if the difference looks bigger.....i feel like the difference is this big...

Really the most important thing is having a degree of familiarity with the data set so that you know which relationships are important and which aren’t.

1 - A selective Y-axis is not as misleading as the other examples, also it gives the huge advantage of presenting smaller details.

2 - very misleading

3 - very misleading

Maybe it's not always intentional, but as journalists they have an obligation to do it right.

If the units are different, then you can't plot the two series with only one vertical axis and so of course two different axes is ok.

But this example is in percent, so the units are not different. If the purpose is to compare the magnitude of series A to the magnitude of series B, then they should use the same axis. Using different axes would be acceptable if the purpose were to compare change over time (or whatever horizontal axis is) within A to change over time within B (as you might with, say, % of state budget spent on education vs % graduation rate). In this case, it's useful to zoom in on each series independently so the change over time is maximized.

(1) THe first panel is not misleading if you wanna show that tho values are almost similar

Why did they bother with such a small percentage ipo? Can’t imagine a 1.9T company really needed 25B.

2 has this problem as well, just on the horizontal axis.

Today, Vodafone is worth about 24£ billion

Interesting how in some years the world has changed so much: tech companies surged (even going some overrated in their worth in the stock listings in my opinion: Tesla, Apple, Google…); meanwhile, others have lost so much worth (telecoms for example)

UK drinks alcohol regularly. I'll drink to that!

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First, that's because of the stymulus payments. It's an anomaly. We're not here to talk about the data itself though.

Second, if you actually look at the y axis it's not even a little bit misleading. This is the default setting for all Fred graphs. If you're showing a value starts at 15.000.000.000 you are not going to start the Y axis at zero...

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Data source: GWI Core (ongoing survey asked in 50 different countries)

Tools used: Adobe Illustrator

Full disclosure: I work for GWI. I normally post my personal work on here but thought this was cool and wanted to share.

We run a survey called Core which asks people about many aspects of their lives – what they think, what they buy, what they’re interested in, their online behavior, etc.

We recently hit a milestone of researching in 50 different countries, so we put together this visual to show where consumers in each country are most distinctive from each other - where they’re more likely to do or think something than any other country. So a higher % of people in the Czech Republic buy cheese than anywhere else in the 50, and so on.

There’s some really interesting cultural context behind these data points - feel free to check out a blog we put together that goes into more detail (did you know that the lead singer of A-ha helped EVs become a thing in Norway? Me neither!).

PS: I know the example for Australia is really boring and obvious but trust me, we sweated blood to find these stats and that was the only one we could find!

Source

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Tools: Figma