Brainlag Plus
Brainlag PlusCritiquing charts and claims
Spot misleading charts, check claims against the real numbers, and compare two distributions with an average and a measure of spread.
Charts that mislead
Read the axes before the bars. Here the vertical axis starts at 400:
The bar for March looks 2.5 times as tall as the bar for February, but the real values are 450 and 420: 450 ÷ 420 = 1.07, only about 7% more. Other tricks to look for: uneven steps on an axis (0, 10, 20, 50, 100 spaced equally) and bars of different widths, which look bigger than their heights say.
The rest of this lesson and its 9 practice questions are in Plus.
Screen 1 of 5, free to read.
- 9 exam-style questions, marked as you go, each with a worked solution
- Anything you get wrong is saved to your flashcards