Data Visualization.
Charts that inform, and the axis tricks that do the opposite.
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A chart is an argument with a design budget. Most misleading sports graphics are not fabricated — they are truthful numbers on a dishonest axis.
What this field actually measures
- Axis baseline
Where the value axis starts.
ReferenceTruncated baselines exaggerate small differences and are the single most common distortion.
- Data-ink ratio
Proportion of ink that encodes actual data.
ReferenceTufte's principle: strip anything that is not carrying information.
- Uncertainty encoding
Whether the chart shows error or spread.
ReferencePoint estimates without intervals overstate precision by construction.
Evidence & metrics
The published work behind the numbers above, and the public datasets you can open to check us. If a claim can’t be traced here, we don’t print it.
Citations
Graphical perception: theory, experimentation, and application
Cleveland & McGill — Journal of the American Statistical Association · 1984
Ranked encodings by accuracy of human judgement: position beats length, which beats angle and area.
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Tufte · 1983
Formalised data-ink ratio and the lie factor as measurable properties of a chart.
Datasets
Matejka & Fitzmaurice / Autodesk Research · free
Datasets with identical summary statistics and wildly different shapes.
Our World in Data chart source files
Global Change Data Lab · free
Every published chart with its underlying, downloadable data.
Still open
- How should uncertainty be shown to a general audience without losing them?
- Which chart types genuinely improve comprehension over a plain table?
- How do we make charts readable on a phone without deleting the caveats?
What we won’t say
We will not publish a chart whose conclusion depends on where the axis starts.
- VO-1Evidence before wit
- VO-2Punch at claims, never at people
- VO-3Say the uncertainty out loud
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