How to Lie with Data Visualization
data.heapanalytics.com
data.heapanalytics.com
> displaying the data with a zero-baseline y-axis tells a more accurate picture, where interest rates are staying static.
This is not true of all data, or even interest rates. Who's to say that a 0.01 increase in interest rate doesn't translate to large differences in money? If this is true (and it depends a lot on the intended audience for the chart), then representing it with a zero baseline is far more deceptive and the "bad" chart does a better job showing that the small increases are in fact getting steadily bigger.
The problem is that data alone is not sufficient to say anything, and the context (in this case, noise in interest rate changes) is too important to give a single rule for your scale. How you interpret context, of course, depends on what you're selling.
It's disturbing how much we look to confirm out preset biases.
If I were to chart people that interpret visualizations to draw conclusions the narrative doesn't always express and people that see visualizations as a pretty picture to go with what the words say, I have a feeling the former group would be so small I could get away with using a pie chart[1]
[1]But seriously, emphasizing the difference between a large majority and a tiny minority is the acceptable use case for a pie chart, isn't it?
[0] http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/039...
These are only the slides, which lack lots of explanations, but might be interesting to someone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=68...