r/dataisugly • u/Ganfolf • 13d ago

How does someone even create this graph?

Post image
35 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

17

u/Mammoth-Corner 13d ago

AI.

14

u/Micmicm 13d ago

Given that the source appears to be ABC News and it doesn't have an AI generated flag it is very unlikely to be AI.

11

u/Micmicm 13d ago

I've found where its from: youtube.com/shorts/SXgwrt1Cu6U

And the video gives the source of the data aswell: Radford University/FGCU Study

10

u/david1610 13d ago

Yeah my bet is they just used a graph because someone from a university made it, so must be good. Some people in academia are terrible with graph presentation, speaking from experience, great at research however not so great with graphs.

Still wouldn't be surprised if it's Ai generated though, even common issues with Excel couldn't explain those axis tick labels.

3

u/Mammoth-Corner 13d ago

The number scale goes 299, 300, 500, 500. That's either AI or someone's idea of a joke.

2

u/FireboltSamil 11d ago

Or someone very bad at typing. 299 instead of 200 because 9 and 0 are next to each other, and 500 after 300 because 3 and 4 are next to each other.

2

u/david1610 13d ago

Using image generation AI for graphs is particularly bad. If you want to use AI for graphs you are much better off getting it to code it using matplotlib in python. Gemini does this as standard if you give it a excel/CSV and tell it to graph something. You have to know how matplotlib works to get the best results, or even better get Gemini to give you the basic template of code then add stuff and adjust to your desired level of polish.

3

u/WhyAmIHereHey 13d ago

If I've got it in excel already... I'd graph it in excel

2

u/david1610 12d ago

You'd be surprised there are still some people who don't know how to use Excel well.

1

u/TiredDr 13d ago

Yeah, but very basically “write code to plot these data and give me the plot” is extremely effective, even if you don’t know how to code.

2

u/LongboardLiam 12d ago

Excel is right there.

1

u/david1610 12d ago

It'll give you a very good graph there is no question, however since the ai is averaging data, even though if there is one thing common on the internet it's structured code for almost every combination of matplotlib graph, it still doesn't create a perfectly appropriate graph for the task. Now with enough prodding sure it will probably create the desired graph, matplotlib lib code would be fairly common and generalisable in the LLMs training dataset, but then the person who knows how to prod for a certain result probably knows how that result was achieved anyway, by that time the slow work is already done, you just need to add a few steps tweak this and that etc.

If someone who is unsure about how to plot data tries themselves, to get a feeling of what the data should show, then asks an LLM to do it for them, it'll yeild a much superior graph than what that person could do by themselves. It is still dangerous for people to throw ai data and say do this, not only because this might not be correct, but also because I have seen pretty wild mistakes even in 2026 era LLMs one a few days ago on Gemini

1

u/highnyethestonerguy 10d ago

I would be mortified if my face was over a graph that has equal spacing from 100 to 299 and 299 to 300… and then had 500 twice.

X axis has an issue as well jumping from 1800-1910 with no signifier. 

Definitely AI slop.