How to (Cleverly) Distort a Visualization to Support Your Biased Narrative

8 Tips and Tricks to Fool Your Audience, Shown in Examples

Data is important — it is the logical justification for world-changing decisions. Unfortunately, arrays of numbers don’t tell as interpretable a story as a picture does, providing an insatiable need for data visualizations.

Visualizations will always be used to tell a story with the data, but unfortunately can be distorted in many ways to give a false impression. What once was regarded as the golden truth — data — can be just as trustworthy and credible as an anecdote when it falls into several visualization pitfalls.

In this article, we’ll explore eight charts that demonstrate the ability to bias the data towards your narrative. Each chart will be structured in the format:

1. Chart context and information.
2. Objections to the integrity of the chart.
3. A statistically honest version of the chart (if applicable).
4. Tips for using the chart to distort all contexts of data (generalizing the method).

Bubble Size | Area or Radius? Whichever suits your narrative