The second sentence explicitly tells you what the graph is showing. The first sentence doesn't contradict that, it just seems to provide some context. (?)
>Starting at something other than zero is like, the #1 thing that cable news channels do to make charts flashed on the screen for a few seconds look exaggerated.
In this case however it is not being flashed on the screen for a few seconds, so we have plenty of time to read it and notice the axis labels, then argue in the comments that the label that we read is deceptive because people might not read it.
Also, if labelling the y axis on this graph as something other than zero is deceptive, should the x axis start at the beginning of time?
> However, in the future I would pick a different visualization I think
I think the box plots were a good choice here. I quickly understood what I was looking at, which is a high compliment for any visualization. When it's done right it seems easy and obvious.
But the y-axis really needs to start at 0. It's the only way the reader will perceive the correct relative difference between the various measurements.
As an extreme example, if I have measurements [A: 100, B: 101, C: 105], and then scale the axes to "fit around" the data (maybe from 100 to 106 on thy y axis), it will seem like C is 5x larger than B. In reality, it's only 1.05x larger.
Leave the whitespace at the bottom of the graph if the relative size of the measurements matters (it usually does).
Shouldn't that first graph have the axes the other way round? Time (date) should be on the x-axis, and the measurement on the y-axis? As it is, it looks terribly confusing to me.
rssoconner is saying that answering those questions becomes trivial when using the log scale. I find this argument persuasive despite having the same reaction you did to the original graph. The rewritten version is easier to understand immediately and is less confusing, but it's not as usable for answering questions about the data.
If the original author's had included a brief explanation of the unexpected looking axis label and its advantages, the whole problem would have been avoided. And I think the argument that "log scales are standard" is not a valid defense here, as this whole thread demonstrates.
There's hardly ever such a thing as a "natural" range. Even if there is, as in the case of percentages, what's the point on wasting half of the graph on variation that has a mundane explanation? Like if you're plotting popularity of religions in the USA, do you really want to spend about 90% of the vertical space of your graph on Christianity? The point a graph is to shed light on the part of the variation that doesn't have a mundane explanation -- i.e., the interesting part.
What you should be complaining about are graphs that don't have labels, as used by some drug companies in advertisements[1]. Maybe that "graphs without labels are bad" meme has maybe been misinterpreted here.
1. In the USA drug companies are permitted to advertise prescription medications.
Yeah, I just added an edit to the submission noting that the x-axis is indeed Time while the y-axis can be values such as duration, frequency, intervals
It would be a lot more intuitive. Even knowing exactly what was being described and how - It still is difficult for me to understand a graph in which Time is on the Y-axis. I considered for a few moment that I was actually being trolled with that graph.
What i guessed:
1. Participants were asked how happy they are.
2. After that they were asked about what percentage of people from /their own country/ would answer happy or very happy.
3. Plot XY of the ratio of people who answered happy or very happy (x axis) vs their average of the percentage of how this happy people estimate how many people answered like them (y axis).
> especially the meaningless x-axis 'early containment measures/time' doesn't make any sense.
The horizontal axis is labelled only 'Time', in the same font and relative location as the vertical axis label.
'Early containment measures' is labelling the animation (or specifically the black arrow that points in the direction it's animated) of the area under the 'sick curve', indicating what it is that causes that change.
e.g. Canada is described as "similar to Americans", but their plot has a completely different shape. Why?
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