Bella consults

More than 70 percent of German citizens are satisfied with Angie. With Guido Westerwelle 39. With Oskar Lafontaine 19. Helmut of Focus magazine likes Angie. A lot. That’s why Focus calculates 71 divided by 19 as 6.7 and not 3.7. The 19 of Oskar is 1 cm from the bottom line. If drawn correctly, Angie’s 71 percent would have been at 3.7 cm of the scale. They are not. They are at 6.7 cm. Exaggeration factor 1.8. Nearly double wrong. If the paper is too short, you can scale down. You must not chop.

Source: Focus 20/2008, May 10th, 2008, p. 16.

I prefer that over Sudoku: Take any newspaper and estimate the exaggeration, then measure it.

The labels are odd, too. Guido is not labeled. Kurt is labeled Guido. Erwin is labeled Oskar. Oskar is labeled Erwin. (Hover over the portraits to see who’s who.)

I am going to ask Focus what they think they are doing. Dear Focus, what do you think you are doing?

Again. My law of proportion. The idea of a chart is: Display proportions between values with proportions of length. Proportional. Proportional. Proportional. You can ignore it. You can also lick out an empty bowl. If you are a rather dumb dog.

I yowled on cheating grids for time axis already. They manipulate. This one is even more elaborate. At first glance you think: a nice man, admits he hasn’t got the data. Wrong. He says: “I tease you but I admit it”. Remove 2001. It suggests that 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 have been the same as 2001. Were they, really?

Source: Euro 06/07, p. 42.

This is Howard’s rule „Ignore the visual metaphor altogether” in action. The data doesn’t fit on paper but I show it. A graph doesn’t fit on your paper? Use a table.

Source: Wirtschaftswoche 27, 2008–06–30, p. 82.

I like „Die Süddeutsche“. Its the first newspaper with graphic tables in the stock market section. And now this. The most interesting information – the outliers, the hotshots and the losers, that what you need to know: hidden. I’ll be on vacation.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2008–07–16.