Notes

The Aim of Good Data Graphics is to Display Data Accurately and Clearly

Of good graphs it may be said what Mark Van Doren observed about brilliant conversationalists:

In their presence others speak well.

A good graph is quiet and lets the data tell their story clearly and completely.

Misleading graphics:

1) Truncated axis.

2) Double y axis.

3) Unequal histogram bins

4) Incorrect extrapolation of 1-d data to 2-d to magnify changes (Tufte's Lie Factor).

5) Context matters.

6) Ethics matters.

7) Emphasize the trivial (unrelated) and ignore the essential.

"I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic." Winston Churchill (1874-1965)