
Misleading charts of 2015, fixed - mikek
http://qz.com/580859/the-most-misleading-charts-of-2015-fixed/
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freditup
I would argue the last "good" chart example, a chart of mass-shootings per
president, is misleading as it compares four two-term presidents (Obama, W.
Bush, Clinton, and Reagan) to a single-term president (H.W. Bush).

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scholia
Deleted comment as I was talking about the wrong graph....

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lucb1e
The first one was indeed a bad chart, the others simply lying with data. That
might as well have been wrong in written text...

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rodionos
There is lies and there is statistics :). For more reading on the subject, I
recommend Beautiful Evidence by E. Tufte. He's a classic when it comes to
infoviz.

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eanzenberg
So this complains about not including the 0 on the y-axis but then complains
about it in the national review global temp chart.

If you have an agenda it will show through, regardless of what you do. Both
graphs accurately portray the data, but most of the public doesn't care to
interpret graphs objectively.

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icegreentea
You'll notice that in his 'best version' of the education chart, the y axis
also does not start at zero. More precisely, the point he made was that
_column_ charts should always start at 0. He makes no blanket statements about
line graphs to show trending.

Also technically any graph that isn't numerically wrong is a problem of the
public not taking care.

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contrast
Technically according to what rule?

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jsprogrammer
Should follow up on the lack of 2008 PP data. Might show up as an abortion
peak...possibly why it has apparently been witheld.

Uh..downmods?

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sitharus
You're saying a missing report, probably the result of miss filing the data,
is a malicious attempt to hide some sort of abortion spike in 2008.

If you find sources you might get upvotes, but given the available information
it's probably simply missing.

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jsprogrammer
Interesting perspective. What harm do you think occurs by 'hiding' such
information? (You'll also note that I did not use the word _malicious_ , nor
imply its meaning.)

The source of the data would necessarily need to be Planned Parenthood, yet
the data for only that particular year is missing.

Anyway, I'm not here for the upvotes; only facts and analysis. It is simply a
fact that only the data for 2008 is missing. The onus is on PP to produce
either the data or the reason why the data has not yet been produced.

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mwfunk
You explicitly said the data was withheld (not missing), and theorized that it
was to hide a spike in abortions. You follow it up by explaining that the
missing data in the chart must be missing because PP didn't provide it.

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jsprogrammer
Found the report: [https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/14436304/ppfa-
annual-...](https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/14436304/ppfa-annual-
report-08-09-final-12-10-10)

Supports up to 25% YOY change from 2007. Can you find this report on PP's
site? Or the breakdown of the absolute values?

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FireBeyond
And yet the report from Politifact in QZ that explicitly shows "year over year
change" shows no such thing:

\- 5% in 2007

\- 9% in 2009

\- -1% in 2010

\- 2% in 2011

\- -2% in 2012

\- 0% in 2013

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jsprogrammer
Please read the thread. You missed the 2008 report (as did politifact). I
linked to the 2008 report which does not show absolute service number
breakdowns; only rounded (or, perhaps, truncated [in which case the YOY change
could be significantly higher than 25%]) percentages from a total.

Why would PP deviate from their standard reporting practices?

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FireBeyond
I did read the thread. You quoted a report that showed '25% year over year'.
With the numbers of this report, there would have to be a 100% increase in
2008 (that reverted back to "normal" levels in 2009) to average out to that
level.

Even rounding numbers would not account for the discrepancy between "2% more
this year than last" and "25% more this year than last".

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jsprogrammer
Its not percent of a percent. It's percent of an absolute change.

1st derivative vs 2nd derivative.

Edit: hmm, maybe I misunderstood your point. I don't think the politifact or
qz YOY data from 2009 is based on 2008 (but rather, 2007 [technically not YOY
then]). How would they have calculated the YOY without the absolute number for
2008?

