Usually, misleading graphs do not have a title, the numbers of the scale are not evenly spaced, the axes are not labeled, or the scale does not begin at zero.
See solution.
Practice makes perfect
We will describe two ways that a line graph can be misleading. Let's begin by looking at an example of a line graph that shows the mean hourly wage for employees at a small company.
The scale on the vertical axis has very small increments that are not equal. We might believe that the greatest increase in the mean hourly wage occurred from 2014 to 2015, when it actually occurred from 2012 to 2013. Now, let's consider another line graph example that shows the number of subscribers of a streaming platform.
Note that the above graph starts at 50 and does not have an indicated break. In the graph, we cannot see clearly whether the increase is linear. We have shown two ways that line graphs can be misleading. However, line graphs can be misleading in many other possible ways. Here are some other common examples.
The graph does not have a title.
The axes are not labeled or the labels are confusing.
