Mistrust Even For Trustful Data
A sacrosanct rule of bar charts is to always start the y-axis at ZERO. Starting at any other number skews the chart and can draw trouble and mistrust.
What should be the value of the first bar in the graph below? <3.5 million?
It’s actually 6 million. And this chart actually appeared on a major news network in 2014 (!).
“It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” –Warren Buffet
