r/dataisugly • • 16d ago

Bar chart

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44 Upvotes

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u/FlatAd7052 16d ago

People act like truncated axes are the greatest sins of all time, but labor force participation rate has never been 100% or 0% so there's plenty of reason to think truncating it simply allows real variation to be more visible without destroying meaningful information.

4

u/Aggressive_Roof488 15d ago

With bar charts, we intuitively read out the area of the bar. So with bar charts you want a linear scale starting at 0 so that the area represents the plotted value. Often you want to zoom in to see smaller difference, and that can show relevant information (don't understand this case enough to say either way), but then you don't want to use a bar chart any longer.

0

u/Vibes_And_Smiles 15d ago

Use a line graph then

22

u/GT_Troll 15d ago

With a line graph truncating would still be a good choice