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Comment by ptype | Hacker News Reader

These charts are meaningless with such a short history, at least include 2008 in them.

I also don't appreciate that the Y axes are not 0-based.

Indeed. And for at least the ones that are measured in prices, we have to assume oil price drops account for a lot of it.

Why zoom out and lose the fidelity? So people who don't actually pay any attention to the axes/labels/etc. can walk away with a slightly better understand of the graph with their casual glance than they otherwise would have?

They won't walk away with better understanding, they'll walk away with worse. It's better to not understand a graph at all than to be mislead by it.

That's a stupid highbrow attitude. I suppose the same concept applies to any form of information? If we don't understand the whole story, it's not worth knowing any part of it?

It's disinformation. It's like when the meteorologist shows a map of temperatures across the region, not mentioning it is the 'feels like' temperature, an arguably useless and misleading number made up of the actual temperature and the wind speed. Just tell me the temperature and wind speed - let me be the judge of what it 'feels like'. Maybe I wear a windbreaker.

For sub-freezing temperatures with strong wind there is most definitely a point in mentioning wind chill factor. It keeps inexperienced people (i.e. tourists) from flooding the ER with frostbites. Otherwise I agree "the temperature it feels like" is silly.

It looks like you have an incomplete understanding of the meaning of 'mislead'.

I agree, if the interesting range of truck orders was 40000-50000 and the fluctuations between those values is the interesting information. However, here the article just mentioned the nose-dive to nearly zero at 2008, and then shows the graph where the number again dives to the x-axis. Then you take a second look and note it's a minor dip compared to 2008. The "interesting" range of truck sales had already been established in the article as 0-50000.

Arguing that axes should never be cut is silly indeed, but axes should also show the relevant ranges for the context (here the 2008 values for both x and y would make today's fluctuations look minor).

It's perhaps more egregious because the article leads with Volvo truck orders falling to approximately zero in a 99% one year drop.

This anchors the reader to misread 50% reductions from peak over the past five years and leaved reasons for the spikes which created the peaks unexamined.

One thing is clear is that the article doesn't point to a Volvo.

Regarding Volvo truck orders, btw:

These are the global numbers from their latest quarterly IR release, regarding Q3 2015 (Their Q4 report is due next Friday):

http://www3.volvo.com/investors/finrep/interim/2015/q3/q3_20...

Net order intake, number of trucks:

42,648 (Q3 2015)

50,449 (Q3 2014)

and, also:

58,024 (Q3 2007)

This last (global, not european) number from: http://www3.volvo.com/investors/finrep/interim/2007/q3/q3_20...

Also interesting, from their report:

> In the third quarter of 2015, net sales for the Volvo Group amounted to SEK 73,309 M (67,222) with growth coming from North America and Europe. However, this was partly offset by a significant decline in South America. Adjusted for changes in currency exchange rates net sales increased by 1% compared to last year.

The Baltic Dry Index chart IS zero-based. It is at an all time low, that's not just some weird illusion.

A few of the charts in the article are zero based, but most are not.

You don't have to zero base line charts. You need to zero base bar charts and area charts but not line charts.

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