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Comment by reubenmorais | Hacker News Reader

Starting at 1 is standard when you're showing measures relative to a baseline. It's a multiplier. 1.4 = 1.4x measure over the baseline.

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The complaint is that the axis is zero suppressed, not that the data starts at 1. The latter is fine, the former a typical dark pattern.

For multiplicative values, 1 is effectively the zero axis.

I understand what you mean, but no. If you use a linear y-asis, you want to see for example that it goes to twice the amount, or halve the amount. The data-to-x-axis distance does this when the zero is not suppressed.

Alternatively, you can go to a log plot, where constant factors produce constant shifts. But even then, one would typically not put the x-axis origin at 1 on the y-axis.

What happens if you have a multiplier value of 0.4x? Can't do that on an axis that starts at 1.

Is it? I've never seen a graph do this. Even e.g. fund performance comparing to index, normalized to starting value, show below-the-line in all graphs I've seen.

E.g. this https://www.blackrock.com/uk/intermediaries/products/230286/...

Doesn't start from zero, but is very clear that it doesn't start from unity either.

It’s pretty easy to understand this chart. In finance absolute numbers make more sense as they are “static”, but in benchmarks it’s typically not very useful to show eg the time spent, as this depends entirely on your hardware and is not very interesting. Rather, you solely want to compare with other numbers, and as such you normalize everything to 1.00 as the starting point.

This type of chart is extremely common in benchmarks.

I'm not saying it's hard to understand.

And how are finance numbers, in what I linked to, static?

I have no problem with normalizing the number. That seems like the obvious best way. That's why they also do it in the finance graph I linked to.

Sorry, I think static was not the correct word; I think I meant absolute, ie Tesla stock being worth $1k is the same for everyone. This is not the case with benchmarks, where the numbers are fairly meaningless and different for everybody, depending on their hardware.

How is it not the same with stock and funds, e.g. what I linked to?

What I linked to doesn't show the fund price, it shows the value normalized. Just like benchmark values usually are. It's not the normalization I (and others) am saying is bad, it's the graph.

But yes, stocks are usually shown graphed with their ticker value. Funds are usually not.

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