this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 70 points 2 years ago (13 children)

What a terrible graph. That "huge" spike is a mere 0.5% increase. That might as well be noise.

Don't believe any graph whose y-axis starts at any value but 0 people.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's nothing wrong with graphs whose y axies don't start at zero. They can be used to misdirect people, but if you're capable of actually seeing the numbers in the axes and doing a little bit of thought, they tell you exactly what one that starts at zero does.

Plus, the opaque spike is shown on the secondary y axis, which does start at 0. It's the translucent layer that's mapped to the primary axis.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I can't remember the last time I saw a graph starting at a non-zero value where it showed anything other than noise whereas they almost always skew my initial impression of the data. If there's no point in doing it but a major downside, I see no point in having them for any reason other than to mislead people.

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