UDP- Interpreting and Visualizing the Data Lesson

Interpreting and Visualizing the Data

Charts and graphs are used to make sense of data. An infographic is a visualization tool used to display charts and graphs in a meaningful way. Infographics contain text to explain the information. Some infographics are interactive, allowing users to manipulate the data that they see. 

How to Visual Data Presentation

Take a look at the How to Visualize Data presentation below to see some examples of representing data.

Can you spot why the data is misleading?

In the graph on the left, the data doesn't start at $0, but somewhere around $3000. This makes the differences appear proportionally much larger - for example, expenditure from 2001-2002 appears to have tripled, at least! In reality, this wasn't the case. The square aspect ratio (the graph is the same height as width) of the graph further aggravates the effect.

The graph on the right starts with $0 but has a range up to $30,000, even though our data only ranges to $9000. This is more accurate than the graph on the left but is still confusing. No wonder people think of statistics as lies if they are used to deceive people about data.

Bar Graph Presentation

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