Bad Infographics: Some Examples

examples of poorly constructed and misleading graphs.

1. Visualcy

2. Satire (from Saturday Night Live)

3. BOO! Misleading: Data have been carefully selected and presented to portray a desired (though misleading) result

4. Better: The more complete data-set

5. Better: The more complete data-set

6. NOT ALL ‘DUCKS’ ARE BAD!! 8

7. Scale increases from equator to poles

8. Scale increases from equator to poles

9. Scale increases from equator to poles

10. Sometimes the globe of Google Earth is better than Google Maps (usually for larger scale mapping)

11. Pie Charts should only be considered if it is being divided into large slices, usually into major fractions: ½, ¼, 1/3.

12. Satire, but true! 210 political parties in Iraqi election!

13. BOO! How to Lie with Pie! Area is now proportional Not proportional (plotting by radius, perhaps?)

14. Which is the largest slice? If you would be unable to slice a REAL pie into the sections you need, then you should consider a bar-graph or a table instead.

15. Better: same data Lots of empty space here! What if we delete it?

16. BOO! Same data, but y-axis is half as high: 1) needs y-scale, 2) makes differences seem more significant than they really are

17. Boo!

18. Poorly-scaled y-axis “flattens” the differences