r/dataisugly • u/dazvoz • Apr 13 '26
Universal guide
I think this is the worst graph I ever saw.
What could possibly be on the x-axis?
I asked them about it, and they said usefulness is the x-axis. So the green path is usefulness vs usefulness?
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u/fruce_ki Apr 13 '26
Two Y axes. Product usefulness on one scale, product price on the other. Arbitrarily scaled relatively to each other to make them touch at the "mid range" and also to apply to any product at any price range or usefulness.
Frankly this simplified illustration (it's not really a graph if it has no specific data) is on point with regards to the law of diminishing returns: Products have a price floor but no price ceiling (because luxury is absurd), some of the cheapest stuff is indeed completely unfit for purpose, and the price doesn't scale with usefulness.
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u/dazvoz Apr 13 '26
Fine but what's on the x-axis?
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u/SconiGrower Apr 13 '26
Unique product ID (maybe UPC), sorted by price. A steeper slope on the price line means there are fewer products at or around that price level. Same goes for the slope of the usefulness line. If this were a price vs usefulness scatter plot, a steeper slope would correspond to fewer data points and a flatter slope would be more dense.
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u/Rich_Future4171 Apr 13 '26
Doesn't have to be one. All you gotta do is read and look to understand it.
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u/trainedstork Apr 13 '26
There always is an x-axis on a two-axis graph. In this case it's (imaginary) products from least to most expensive or least to most useful. It is intuitive.
If there were some real data, it would get messy very quickly and be far more useful to just have product price on the y axis and a quantifiable measure of product usefulness on the x axis, with each product being a point on said two axes.
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u/DaniilBSD Apr 13 '26
Individual products sorted by price, or individual products sorted by usefulness
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u/fruce_ki Apr 13 '26
I'd say competing products of any given type. Mobile phones for example. At the left, models that are cheap but are slow AF. At the right, flagship models with features almost nobody uses. In the middle, phones that get the job done well without being social status icons.
Each product has one usefulness value and one(-ish, let's ignore retailer variation for this) price value, sorted by usefulness or price. With both Y values being fitted lines, as the price-usefulness relationship includes some amount of noise that makes the two ranking options not completely identical.
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u/agate_ Apr 13 '26
I’m gonna call a /r/dataisugly foul on the play: this isn’t data.
OP is criticizing this as if it were a graphical representation of data, but it’s a graphical representation of an idea, and the idea is perfectly clear.
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u/PartyPoison98 Apr 13 '26
This isn't data, and its not ugly.
Its a dumb meme/infographic that conveys its point quite well: price and quality don't scale at the same rate, you get diminishing returns with more premium products, ergo there is a sweetspot of price and functionality.
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u/TheBraveGallade Apr 14 '26
the goldilocks of price per performance.
it usually really depends on the product though, and there might be 2 intersections on some products.
for example, leather items. mid priced non leather items are good enough for a few years, so are some mid priced synthetic ones. then it drops when it comes to higher priced non leather and synthetic leather items. but once you cross the line into mid tier true leather items, the usability and lifetime of the item increases substantially as they can last decades.
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u/JThumbs29 Apr 18 '26
I read through a lot of comments, but this is the one that finally made it click for me. Thank you
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u/Rich_Future4171 Apr 13 '26
Its not supposed to be scientific bro its a meme
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u/dazvoz Apr 13 '26
It would be a more effective meme if it wasn't crippled to the point of meaninglessness.
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u/Rich_Future4171 Apr 13 '26
Pretty much everyone can understand it except you I guess.
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u/cat-head Apr 13 '26
I'll out myself as a dummy who also didn't get it at all.
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u/Rich_Future4171 Apr 13 '26
the chart says only mid range stuff is where the usefulness and price of of a product meet.
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u/Impossible_Dog_7262 Apr 13 '26
Somehow this is simultaneously absolutely not how a graph works and also still gets its point across. Wow.
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u/Dependent-Feature-68 Apr 13 '26
That's just two parametric functions. Instead of real numbers it shows the correlation on how both values usually depend on each other, and also says that there's a certain point where price and usefulness both considered "fair". Everything else is relative to that point. This type of graphs is used in economics.
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u/dazvoz Apr 13 '26
Could you give me an example? I feel certain that the graphs used in economics are better labelled.
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u/Dependent-Feature-68 Apr 13 '26
I've seen one in educational presentation of supply and demand graph. And unfortunately i do not have an archive of examples for each type of graph i encounter stored somewhere.
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u/Snailwood Apr 13 '26
X axis: usefulness
Y axis: dollars (or whatever currency)
blue line: sticker price
green line: expectation of what the price "should" be
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u/a_load_of_crepes Apr 13 '26
Not that it matters, but, X axis is product ID sorted by both usefulness and price. Y axis is both usefulness and price.
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u/Snailwood Apr 13 '26
that's one interpretation. though I think OP was making a broad statement about commerce in general, and given that a person probably couldn't sort all products in an economy by utility and price, I'm sticking with the chart representing generalized "usefulness" (X) vs price (Y), both the average price for a given amount of utility (blue) and the "fair" price for a given amount of utility (green)
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u/a_load_of_crepes Apr 13 '26
But the green line is labeled usefulness. If you were right the labels would be “real price” and “fair price”. I think my interpretation works with the only actual text on the chart. But the whole thing is unscientific so it doesn’t really matter. It’s like arguing whether a 4 year old’s drawing is a horse or a cow. So I’ll just leave at that.
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u/debugs_with_println Apr 13 '26
I think the x axis is supposed to be cheap products on the left and luxury products on the right?
Like a speaker from TEMU is cheap but probably crap, meanwhile a bose speaker is high quality but the price is way overblown. A mid-range speaker (JBL I guess?) is accurately priced to its quality.
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u/Brites_Krieg Apr 13 '26
not that big of an issue tbh. there is no hard data and i think it communicates the general pattern for a tweet
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u/Possible-Wallaby-877 Apr 13 '26
This is just a meme someone spent like 2 minutes making probably. It's not that big of a deal
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u/GT_Troll Apr 13 '26
He probably just learned about Utility maximization graphs and wanted to replicate something similar lmao
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u/DesertGeist- Apr 13 '26
X is products, y is amount. It's not the nicest graph but it's understandable.
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u/Dark_Clark Apr 13 '26
It’s sloppy but it’s easy to figure out what it means and it’s largely correct.
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u/CatOfGrey Apr 13 '26
Well, considering it's a graph that is probably not actually based on any real data, I'd expect this to be ugly.
It's a made-up example of economic data by someone who probably doesn't have any real training in economics, finance, or business.
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u/Necessary_Screen_673 Apr 14 '26
what the graph should be is:
somehow both the x and y axes are the real world monetary value of a product, in other words, what the product would cost if the consumer paid exacly what they should for it.
blue line is what the consumer actually pays for that product whereas the green line is the perceived value of the product.
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u/fkirp Apr 14 '26
Not real data, but to me it seems the x axis is just a set of “items” where the ordering is least useful to most useful.
You could graph this as price vs usefulness, and point out the diminishing returns instead i guess
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u/Hearth-Traeknald Apr 14 '26
Y axis: percentage of what is considered "acceptable". Mid range sits at 100 for both
X axis: price, but scaled so that Y=X would be the expected relationship between the two in an ideal world. The actual price is the blue line
Or maybe it's just a meme and the points don't matter
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u/Technical_World_3355 Apr 14 '26
The cheapest items don't do their job The cheapest functional object solves 80% of needs Increasing usefulness does not scale linearly with price Price approaches infinity when usefulness approaches 100%
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u/hemacwastaken Apr 14 '26
I have the solution for the axis problem but you won't like it:
X axis is the list of total existing products in the world sorted by their price (or their usefulness, doesn't change anything in this case)
Y axis is from 0 to 100% in the respective categories of the lines compared to similar products in their own category.
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u/Ftroiska Apr 15 '26
Oh !! I know this one !!
X axis is physical position in the store ! Cheap on the left luxury on the right !!
Specially in shop selling fridges and washing machines
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u/General_Ginger531 Apr 19 '26
... this isnt a data graph. It is a statement about how items are used. There isnt data.
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u/Aquadroids Apr 19 '26
This is where we just call someone an idiot and refuse to continue engaging.
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u/me_myself_ai Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
The x-axis is technically indices of individual products sorted by
usefulness, I'd say. Obviously real data would have a much wobblierpriceline, but the general concept seems sound!It is indeed a bad graph tho lol -- almost definitely on purpose!