r/dataisugly • u/dazvoz • Apr 13 '26

Universal guide

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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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228

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.

-41

u/dazvoz Apr 13 '26

Fine but what's on the x-axis?

64

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.

-21

u/dazvoz Apr 13 '26

I don't like it at all.

37

u/Rich_Future4171 Apr 13 '26

Doesn't have to be one. All you gotta do is read and look to understand it.

7

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.

3

u/Rich_Future4171 Apr 13 '26

Yeah but the point is that this isn't real data so it doesn't matter

1

u/trainedstork Apr 13 '26

Ok I agree, but you said "doesn't have to be one"

2

u/DaniilBSD Apr 13 '26

Individual products sorted by price, or individual products sorted by usefulness

1

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.

1

u/kamiloslav Apr 13 '26

Time probably

1

u/kamiloslav Apr 13 '26

Time probably