Dangers in Visualized Data
Visualized data. That’s graphs, pie-charts and all kinds of creative representations of data. While they make it easier to understand many things, they can also be misleading, write Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West in Calling Bullshit . And not always because of malice or bad intentions… As software makes visual graphics easy, people tend to come up with eye-catching ways of presenting data. Nothing wrong with that, unless… “The attempt to be cute makes it harder for the reader to understand the underlying data.” For example, a 3D graph makes it hard to compare the bars: how much taller is the 3 rd class bar compared to the 1 st class bar? It’s hard to say (visually) since the 1 st class bar is farther away and don’t far off objects look shorter than they are? Sure, the numerical values are written, but if one has to read it to make sense, then why use a graphic? Even worse, why create an easy-to-misread graphic? Another common error is to show informat...