Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

OK so this chart really bugs me:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/pix-media/TV+Categories.png

Why is the bottom line 8%? and why are the y-axis lines ate 8% intervals? No reason I can see.

Is it not obvious that starting at 0 and using intervals of 5 or 10 makes it easier for people to grasp the relevant information clearly?

</rant>



It's still a regular linearly-scaled chart, so I don't think it's too confusing.

Funny enough, I plugged this into Google Docs to see if I could re-scale to give you a comparison of the given chart vs a 0-based, 5-unit-interval chart and it looks like that's actually what they used to generate the chart.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag2TNlAslc4GdFd...

Apparently the automatic scaling gives you the 8-based scale you see in their post. (And apparently you can't manually re-scale a Google Docs chart.) Using "stack" mode (I don't actually know what this option does for a single-series chart like this) gives you a 0-based, 10-unit-interval chart. (Again, not sure if you can adjust this to any other unit-scale.)

Slightly different scale, but I don't think it's a significant difference (though the "television" portion does appear slightly smaller in the automatic scale).

Charts like these are always susceptible to scale-skew and perception, and even simple charts (like this) can be debated on those subjective measures.


Because it intentionally overstates their point?


Whenever I see graphs like that, I write the page off as being advertising rather than science.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: