Misleading Graphs: Why the Axis Matters

All videos + transcripts: https://clearstistics.com One town, one month of buses. On one chart, bus 4 looks twice as late as bus 7. On another chart of the very same two numbers, there is hardly any difference. Neither chart changed a number: the axis did. In this video: why a bar's length is its number, so a bar chart starts at zero; why a line chart may zoom in, and why your eye still makes the change look bigger; how two scales on one chart can make almost any two lines look like partners; and the one habit for every chart you meet: read the axis, where it starts and where it ends, before you read the shape. No prior maths needed. Every bar and line in this video comes straight from the model that generated it. The bus delays and temperatures are made-up numbers. Sources: Statistics Canada, Statistics: Power from Data! (Using graphs); Yang, Vargas-Restrepo, Stanley and Marsh (2021), Truncating bar graphs persistently misleads viewers, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 10(2); Correll, Bertini and Franconeri (2020), Truncating the y-axis: threat or menace?, CHI 2020; Witt (2019), Graph construction, Meta-Psychology 3; UK Government Analysis Function, Data visualisation: charts; Bergstrom and West, Calling Bullshit (Misleading axes). The histograms are from the histograms video. Chapters: 0:00 Same two numbers, two stories 0:27 Isn't a chart just the numbers? 0:55 A bar's length is its number 1:24 How much later is bus 4? 1:38 The axis slides, the numbers stay 2:30 Bars from zero, lines may zoom 3:05 Knowing is not enough: the habit 3:39 Two scales on one chart 4:27 One look back 4:42 In one picture 5:05 Next time Watch the series in order:    • Statistics for Beginners: Descriptive Stat...   More from the channel: @clearstistics Earlier videos: The Normal Distribution:    • The Normal Distribution, Explained Simply   Z-Scores:    • Z-Scores Explained Simply: How Rare Is 2 M...   Percentiles & IQR:    • Percentiles and Quartiles Explained: the I...   The Boxplot:    • The Boxplot Explained Simply   Mean vs Median:    • Mean vs Median: Which One to Use When?   Skewed Distributions:    • Skewed Distributions Explained Simply   The Log Transformation:    • The Log Transformation: One Axis Trick   Histograms:    • Histograms: Bin Width Changes the Story   Variance and n − 1:    • Variance: Why We Divide by n − 1   Scatterplots:    • Scatterplots: Two Variables at Once   Correlation:    • Correlation: What r Really Tells You   Correlation vs Causation:    • Correlation vs Causation: Do Kids With Big...   Music: "Wholesome" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...