how the heck do graphs manipulate viewers!?

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Zacharine

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Apr 17, 2009
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Some additional info would be nice.

What graphs? What viewers? Who and what are we talking about? Is this about Bell-curve stylized graphs affecting the results of economic analysts or possibly the curve of past trends in Dow Jones Industrials Average affect people's decision to buy games? What?
 

ZonerZ

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Aug 27, 2008
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they're just...so...manipulating.

They made you post this, didn't they? THE BASTARDS!!!
 

lostclause

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Mar 31, 2009
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'Those damn lies and their statistics'. There are lots of ways, having an irregular axis is one. This makes a small change seem like a large one. Sometimes this is necessary (like currency values) but it can confuse people into thinking say that their currency is dropping hugely when it's only a fraction of a cent. I'll see if I can find a link and edit it in.
Edit: Here we are
http://www.physics.smu.edu/~pseudo/LieStat/
 

lord omad

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Jun 9, 2009
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i think it means trick you into thinking the way they want them to
like '99% of people support this person' and they asked whether or not you supported him/her outside a convention which they are running
 

Vern

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Sep 19, 2008
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The Hockey Stick Graph. Correlation does not equal causation. But present it in a shocking enough manner with enough hurricanes and starving Africans and you can do anything. And depending on scale, you can make a .02% difference look like a mountain. They're generally misleading to prove a persons point, and can be easily picked apart simply by paying attention to the scale of the graph.

And my favorite graph:



Waka waka waka
 

Zacharine

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Apr 17, 2009
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lord omad said:
i think it means trick you into thinking the way they want them to
like '99% of people support this person' and they asked whether or not you supported him/her outside a convention which they are running
Well, my mathematics professor always says the three comparative forms of 'Lie' are:

Lie, Political promise, Statistic. As in 'Bad, worse, worst'

Statistics can be made to show anything. Did you know the major cause for death of humans on this planet is swallowing small amounts of spit continuously for a long time?

How this revelation of the statistics' ability to mislead supposed to be news or somehow previously unrealized, I don't know. It's like saying 'Hey guys, the grass is green!' Well, duh...?
 

Kasawd

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Jun 1, 2009
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By making us believe fake statistics because they appear to be a divided pie, which we all know is delicious and must be obeyed due to the off chance we may get a slice.
 

Good morning blues

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Sep 24, 2008
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Misleading scales, faulty data, incomplete data... basically there's a billion ways it could happen so you're going to need to be a hell of a lot more specific than that.
 

Pumpkin_Eater

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Mar 17, 2009
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One thing I haven't seen ITT yet that's unique to graphs is truncating. Basically it means you cut a large portion out of the bars, which results in differences that appear larger than they really are.

I didn't have any luck finding one, but the Y-Axis would start somewhere other than 0 and the bars would be drastically different sizes despite representing relatively similar quantities. One of Reagen's cabinet ministers (education I think) was notorious for this.
 

Altorin

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May 16, 2008
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Good morning blues said:
Misleading scales, faulty data, incomplete data... basically there's a billion ways it could happen so you're going to need to be a hell of a lot more specific than that.
basically this

for instance

if one company sells a 1.5 million of something, and another company sells 1.6 million of something

and the the second company set the bottom of the scale at 1.4 million, and the top at 1.6 million, it'll look like the one that sold 1.6 million sold WAY WAY WAY more then the one that sold 1.5 million, even if they didn't.

and graphs aren't really regulated.