MEPX
Chapter 5 of 10All chapters
  1. 1Axis tricks
  2. 2Cherry-picked ranges
  3. 3Area and 3D
  4. 4Missing denominators
  5. 5What is not shown
  6. 6Dual axes and correlation
  7. 7Aggregation effects
  8. 8Maps
  9. 9Honest mistakes and deliberate ones
  10. 10A reading checklist

Chapter 5 of 10

What is not shown

Omission as distortion.

Missing categories

Dropping an inconvenient group, an outlier, or the option nobody chose changes the picture entirely. Percentages that do not sum sensibly are a clue.

  • Ask what happened to the rest of the data.
  • Survivorship: only what made it through is in the chart.

Uncertainty removed

Point estimates drawn without error bars imply precision that does not exist, especially in forecasts and small samples.