How to spot a misleading graph - Lea Gaslowitz
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- View full lesson: ed.ted.com/less...
When they’re used well, graphs can help us intuitively grasp complex data. But as visual software has enabled more usage of graphs throughout all media, it has also made them easier to use in a careless or dishonest way - and as it turns out, there are plenty of ways graphs can mislead and outright manipulate. Lea Gaslowitz shares some things to look out for.
Lesson by Lea Gaslowitz, directed by Mark Phillips.
One manipulation I would have added: I've seen at least one instance of a graph where the Y axis was *inverted* without explanation, making it seem like an increase was actually a decrease.
Did it have to do with climate change? The reason I ask is because I've seen graphs that go into the past as the x-axis increases and graphs that go into the future. Both are pretty common in paleoclimate research, but they can be very misleading (sometimes intentionally so) if the viewers don't know what they're looking at.
School shootings in the US?
They did that on Fox News one time to show jobs increasing when they were actually decreasing or vice versa.
@Maximal's Personal Profile I remember another time they used a line graph and and messed with the y-axis for the amount of tax cuts there would be under someone's proposal versus someone else's proposal and it looked like a huge difference when in reality it was a 1% difference.
@@drabberfrog Yep, I'm pretty sure that's the one I was thinking of
My favorite is when they don't even label the increments, so you know they've mislead you, but you can't actually tell how badly.
Bezos charts?
illusion 100
😆
Ah yes, the PragerU method.
woodfur00 homest
Now I know how to mislead people using graphs. Learning something new everyday...
Dorupero That's the Spirit!
Two types of people.
Dorupero I
I'm guilty of using faulty logic to mislead idiots for my own personal gain.
That said, I don't feel guilty about it at all. Also might employ the use of some graphs if ever needed.
Most people are to dumb to read a graph, you can just use paper and crayons.
manipulative guy : the numbers don't lie.
.
.
ted-ed: well no, but actually yes.
manipulative guy : the number don’t lie
Me : You’re not a number, Sir !
Number never lie, they're just hard to read.
√-2
Number's Are'nt lying figure is
Statistics never lie,
people do.
TedEd is the digital equivalent of a library. Its a nice little reading corner. A hammock under a warm light. A warm cup of cocoa.
And Tedx is reading Wikipedia for an assignment at midnight. Or maybe twitter or quora.
I like reading books but they way TedEd explain things make it so easy to undestend for me
So fudging right
You spelt coffee all wrong. 😁
The first day
Of work
Please, more of these information dissection videos. People are bombarded with information and just do not know what to do with it.
You should learn symbolic logic
575 likes and two comments wow very inconsistent lol
630 and 3 you mean
There is a radical idea... Think!
IRONIC!😁
I love how Lea was like, "Let's have the guy marry the graph at the end," and Ted-Ed was like, "Absolutely."
“Don’t be swayed by the lines and curves”
Hmmmmmmm. Do you have something you need to tell us, TED?
Ok boomer
@@godturtle6274 Because this is being favoured by UA-cam now.
2 more likes
@@griffith7615 emo boy
Don't forget double Y axes! With those, you can legitimately make the price of bananas appear to correlate with NASA's funding levels.
Professor Politics yep, graph designers take advantage of assumption of causation
Just adding this link for anyone not convinced (it shows such graphs with double Y axes): www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Although, even if it is a single Y axis, correlation NEVER proves causation! It may only be considered a possible indication.
This is now one of my favorite things. I really liked the Spelling Bee word length vs. Death by spider bite.
Bananas?
Ow, Chom choms you mean
???
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain.
fr
‘Twas not Twain. He, himself, attributed it to Disraeli but that, too, is incorrect. It may have been that well known character, Anon E. Muss.
@@q.e.d.9112 aha, i c what u did there ;)
Statistics never lie,
people do.
Good one 🤣👍
Got this from a very intelligent drag queen:
"Statistics is like a bikini; What it reveals is interesting but what it hides is crucial"
Amazing
Statistics is like a bikini: They're not actually planning to show off the hidden parts anytime soon.
@@R2Cv1 statitics are like a bikini
I go on a site to see what it hides
Statistics are like a bikini, they uncover everything yet show nothing.
-a yugoslavian jokebook from 1998-
Mmm...
Javier Milei?
Everyone across the world needs to watch this video and apply it in life.
Yes
I like the thumbnail.... in the thumbnail...
Lorna S huh
Christopher Wright The dude's face is a thumbnail.
All politicians look like that
Oh!
They changed it
Ted-Ed is getting quite violent. Their recent videos are too graph-ic
Obscure History true
I was going to make a joke, but you rasied the Bar above my Line of jokes.
*slow clap*
😒
Obscure History Well done, my friend.
the worst case of this ive ever seen is one about gun deaths, where they flat out just flipped the scale...
dang, no way?! happen to have a source?
@@gusmc2220 i think they're referring to the "Gun Deaths In Florida" graph. if you google 'gun deaths stand your ground law graph' it should show up
@@k.boi.d yup that's the right one
@@k.boi.d ty I'll check it out
@@eb33 wow, no kidding that graph is misleading on all kinds of levels!
Liar: numbers don’t lie.
Me: You’re a human,not a number.
I remember seeing a graph on violent crime rates that had a reversed x-axis, used inconsistent differences between times, used opinion polls rather than hard numbers, and had a margin of error so larger than some of the difference between points
Read "How to lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff: a masterpiece in this field!
Giovanni Masseria 😺 Yes, indeed! I used Huff’s book in my Health Promotion degree for the research methodology module and gained a credit score for my assignment.
Ted-eḍ uploads always make my day better! Thanks for that!!!
And sometimes companies pay scientists to distort their data, thus making the graph inherently wrong even without distorting the graph and its context.
Yeah I think it is called data fudging.
and sometimes 'scientists' force the measured data to fit the theory, instead of changing the theory in light of new data, which means it's not science anymore...
Or a company pays some scientist they publish, and the company buries it and funnels massive fortunes into lawmakers so they can make a few extra bucks before they kill everyone.
One must always be asking themselves "Why axis?" when looking at a graph.
Allies in the Nuremberg trials be like:
@@gunter6377 b r o
Ha ha
also ask axis in an accent
1:53 tbh i never noticed that anyone can misrepresent a graph like that. Maybe that's why i never got good marks at graph questions
Tell Me This that is because altering the time axis on a graph is only done on logarithmic graphs, which are only used on physics usually. a normal graph should NEVER have irregular periods
That's such an awfully made graph it's barely a graph at all, disproportionality between the Y and the X axis is tolerable and sometimes necessary, disproportionality between intervals of the same data with no indication at all is art rather than statistics.
Tell Me This The fox news graph not only manipulated the horizontal axis, but the vertical axis as well, by only showing a range from around 6.5 million to 15 million. It also stretches the middle two points out towards the edges despite them being the closest together time wise.
Tell Me This Fox News used this with unemployment rates in the first 100 days as a way to show republicans as the ones who give jobs. What this doesn't show is that the policies of said president need time to have an affect on unemployment. So what should be instead shown is the unemployment rate at the end of the presidency.
3:34 "President Thumb to congress: Think of it as a new rule of thumb"
Wow.
Level of joke: Ascended
Graph literacy is one of the most important skills we need to know. Sadly people are still often fooled by graphs. I also need to train myself to look at graphs more critically
At least for the Americas. My math textbooks teaches us on how to read and use graphs correctly. I wonder what their syllabus looks like (cuz I'm in Singapore).
Percentages can mislead us too.
One example form my Math Textbook:
"More than *60%* are unhappy with..." is the title, but when you look at the content, only 3 people were in the poll and 2 said that they are unhappy.
TED-ED: A toothpaste brand says it will destroy the most plaque.
Me: *WHY IS THE TOOTHPASTE ON THE EYES*
"How to Lie with Statistics" should be mandatory reading these days
0:26 I DIED AT THIS PART
Ok..?
He screm
Your reaction to that part: 0:26
Ok cool
Ok? Nobody asked tho.
This is the best animation on Ted ed when it comes to demonstration. Well done, keep it up!
When lockdown started, my teacher showed me an infographic whose sources were biased, and the pie graph's numbers flat out contradicted what the graph told me
YES A TED-ED VIDEO THAT I UNDERSTAND. THIS MEANS THAT IM SMARTER MY IQ IS FINALLY 2!
What. What was your past iq
@@alihesham8167 3
@@tm-vg4yq bruh
@@tm-vg4yq DOES THAT MAKE MY IQ 2 AS WELL??
LET’S HAVE OUR IQS AT 2 TOGETHER!!
what z i koo
This you TedEd for educating us, it’s an amazing service! 🙌🏽🙏🏽👏🏽 I hope your staff live happy lives!
3:37 this is the pinnacle of weird Ted Ed animation.
3:27?
Moral of the story:
Only marry a graph if the measurements are right to you.
Imagine actually believing Chevy is that much more reliable then Toyota
Lol
Lolol
But the Chevy has half the failures, so you could argue that it’s twice as reliable
@@lucaseirfeldt9664 The graph only shows the one day that Chevys were more reliable.
This is going to turn into a war soon: Chevy vs Toyota.
This is a very good, comprehensive way to teach people how to read graphs. If only everyone saw and understood this.
I never realized graphs can be used this way. Thanks Ted Ed, I’ve learnt something new today.
Well, like my maths teacher told us: "never trust a statistic that you haven't manipulated yourself"
3:27 i need that loop
this is a great intoduction to graphs and charts. I watch a 1 hour long video about this - time frames, sample size, population, "hide full information", exclusions atc. The most use methods are mention in this video but they are far more than you think
whenever the video showed an example of a graph it was like a game to see if i could spot the misleading part before the narrator explained it
Please could you do a video on Social Anxiety vs. Social Awkwardness? Lots of people don't know the difference and claim they have one when really they have the other.
Hopefully assholes will do the same. Hi there, d1p70.
If it weren't for people with social awkwardness or anxiety, then all of society would be spewing their BS small talk about things that no one cares about. It's us who add value to conversations.
But I think it's a good thing that natural selection will eventually exterminate our type. It would probably be better for humanity in the big picture.
That said, it's not purely genetic. More and more people are developing these anxieties since everyone's becoming reclusive with today's technology.
Bottom line, I'm not sure of what I'm talking about, so a Ted-Ed video about this would be nice.
@@sertaki LOL
@@schizophrenicenthusiast i will spread that genes and i will made my children anxious and proud at the same time
@@zoro.7 Lol just re-read my comment from 3 years ago, how cringe.
Godspeed my friend, spread your seed to the far ends of the earth
You omitted the theory that all human perception is logarithmic. While yes, we should look at all the data, sometimes scaling a graph differently actually reveals more information by hiding the irrelevant parts. I don't know much about your example car reliability but that extra 1% really is that important. In that way, a graph that shows the full picture might be the one lying by drowning the important data in the irrelevant.
Which is why context matter
And there goes the saying _"numbers don't lie"_ out the window.
Numbers don’t lie, but out of context they can easily be made misleading
Tell that to Scott Steiner
Numbers never lied, here you are not getting numbers you are getting a representation of them with a bit of data missing, for eg the Chevy ad never gave you numbers it gave a representation and if you look at that there was nothing wrong with it the scale was indeed 95-100% so the given data was represented perfectly
Numbers don't lie. People lie using numbers.
Best video of Ted Ed out of the many that I have seen so far 🔥
I keep coming back to watch this every once in a while and I don't know while.
This sort of content is what the world needs desperately right now.
For some reason, instead of feeling distrust, I'm always impressed when I hear smart marketing strategies.
I guess I'm pretty different.
When your drama teacher tells you to look at the subtext of EVERYTHING
3:00: in this case, there's no reason to start the graph at 0 C, which isn't even a meaningful zero point. Setting the scale to fit the range of the data would make the graph clearer in this case. Also, the anomaly graph should define what exactly the values mean.
Cyberchase had an episode about this exact topic like 20 years ago.
Which is more important than people might think. That was the time when most people didn't have excel at home and could make their own graphs. Like a pre-information for the upcoming age.
I remember that episode :)
Hello there
Ted Ed: how to spot a misleading graph
PragerU: **sweats nervously**
what do you mean the graph is blue it can't be misleading it's too cute, how dare you insult graph-chan
Also applies to most left wing “evidence” and “data”.
3:36
"Don't be swayed by the lines and curves" - man who recently divorced a gold-digger
"I want him to marry the graph."
"Okay. And-- okay."
"Wait I have some questions--"
This is probably the best youtube channel I've found till now
my favorite one is when there’s not even labels or numbers and it’s just a title
I don't know if it taught in other countries but one of the chapters of my maths class is graph reading and it's about calling out misleading graphs. My favourite class as instead of doing integration and differentiation we look at graphs.
when a video about misleading graphs uses misleading graphs expressed as the 'honest' graph to compare ot other misleading graphs you've nit the next level.
2:50 ?
That's what I thought when I saw this video.
"We don't like this graph. We like this other one. It supports our agenda better"
@@Jabberwockybird Because outcomes matter. A 1% increase in the lifespan of a motor vehicle has no significant ramifications, but a 1C rise in ocean temperatures has enormous ramifications.
The full scale graph will never just rapidly turn a corner like you want to see. If that left graph looked like a rollercoaster, it would mean humanity is 100% dead and no one is around to look at graphs anymore.
Those graphs are showing 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water being heated by over 1C, multiple years in a row. It's not something that just rapidly shoots up one year. It takes decades, it takes centuries.
It takes something like 569,697,660,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy to do that every year.
That's 1.4 BILLION TIMES more energy than a megaton nuclear bomb, every year.
That's how much excess abnormal energy is currently being annually applied to fundamentally changing the climate of our planet. If you think the graph on the left adequately shows that change, you're nuts.
@@twelvecatsinatrenchcoat What you have just described is not what is illustrated in that graph or in the graphs supplied by NOAA or NASA. A temperature has been chosen arbitrarily as a "norm" and then the anomaly is the difference relative to the arbitrarily chosen norm. It is most certainly not cumulative. This is not a reliable or comprehensive data set. It is solely intended to assist policy makers by providing curated data points.
Additionally, the temperature data specifically relates to Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies, not the entirety of all the water in all the oceans.
As a Thumb supporter I am offended by this video.
Who's Thumb?
I honestly think they Nailed it.
@@sjwimmel I see what you did there 🙃🙃🙃👍👍
Samuel Bosch-Bird the thumb president guy
KİLL THAT SOCİAL JUSTİCE WARRİOUR
I learned this in math class last year and I think everyone should know, so good job making a video about it
you forgot to mention that starting at 0 is not rule since their are situations that starting at zero render the graph to be useless for example with temperature and some graphs needs to show values below zero so pretty much you also need context of what the graph presents and facts surrounding it and people often manipulate the graph to lie as shown in television where majority not all are false,manipulated, and just outright not giving information
They said you need context...
*FINALLY A VIDEO THAT EXPLAINS GRAPHS*
so, on one hand distorting the y-axis is unacceptable for chevy but acceptable in the temperature case.. and it's because of context... so now it depends on how you pitch the context right? I could imagine chevy arguing that it is exactly in the 95-100 range that is relevant for consumers.
Even a rise of half a degree Celsius can cause big problems on our environment. They said it in the video.
yes, they said it! yes I agree with that statement! this does not change any fact on my comment
Context
Nuno Calaim 3% more Chevy trucks on the roads after a certain time than Nissan trucks makes no difference in actual performance. 2% increase in temperature has a significant practical impact that is observable on a macro scale.
3:28 President Thumb to Congress “Think of it as a new rule of thumb” 😂
Remember when TED-ed only had a few thousand subscribers?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I can think of at least a dozen more methods with examples of how to fudge diagrams.
Hmmmm... I wonder who that politician was
Nicole Sahrling.
Not god emperor Trump
Any of them, it could be any of them.
HMHMMMMMMMMMMMM
Nicole Sahrling That's just the *thumbnail*
The best ones arw when there are no labels or numbers. Just a line and 2 axes, so it gives you literally no information
Literally every prager u video ever in the history of youtube
people watching prageru videos be like:
I dont know what he's saying but I like the way hes saying it
Graphics team: What should we use as a politician? Boss: Do something that looks enough like Trump to suspect, but not enough to be accused.
Gabriel Concha If you see a giant toe and think of Trump, maybe the problem is not with the graphics team...
Like how they used a fox news graph and a global warming topic as well? Slight bias.
@@forGodandCountry7 Fox news and global warming are low-hanging fruit. You know you will easily find misleading graphs in both.
Are we talking about the "drinking bleach shelters you from covid" guy?
The one at the beginning seems to be a democrat. Before I saw the post date I thought it was Biden.
not going to lie, i have to watch this for class but this video was super cool
The most prominent one I know so far
Mixing correlation for causation
The same as with the line graphs can be done with bar graphs as well. If the time-gap of two bars are not equal to each other you're supposed to widen the bar while maintaining the area constant to better represent the fact you're using a wider timescale.
For example: Over February the population increase was 2% and over March and April together the population increase was 5% (fictive numbers for the purpose of the example). You wouldn't represent March and April together at the 5% mark, but rather at 2.5% and make it twice as wide. This better represents the fact each month would've been closer to the 2.5% average over this given time period, which is a much more realistic representation and shows a far less drastic increase in population growth.
I see far too many people do this wrong and failing to represent unevenly spread data properly is a cardinal sin in science.
3:27 that's how my math teacher teaches
What about graphs without axis unit. Companies love doing this in their Keynote presentation like Apple. They just show a graph with increase in their product performance without proper labels or unit just to show the trend line is increasing.
I like the way they show you a misleading graph, and then excuse the ipcc's misleading graphs.
Great video. Well edited, pertinent examples, good narration, and a relevant point to society. 👍👍
Is that Donald Trump as a thumb.
I hope so. Because that would be HiLaRiOuS
I think so
I'll bet anything the inside joke is because Trump tweets so much, they decided to give him the appearance of a thumb as a result
Melanie Anne Ahern yep
that would be great
I give this comment a thumb up
Finally, I now know that all the graphs in calculus are fake. Don’t judge me, I genuinely love math, I just found this idea funny.
Great until 3 min in where that explain the we should ignore the long term data for temperature change in favor of the short term change due to the significance. Way to cherry pick data or excuse misleading techniques.
What are you talking about? Both graphs are for the exact same time period.
The first represents the average temperature and the second represents the average temperature variation.
The second graph was more significant because it takes the average temperature for all 1880 - 2016 and shows how much the individual years variated from that better showing the smaller changes and trends.
The first graph was a bit manipulative because it gave no average dividing line to easily see trends and it used a much wider temperature scale to make it appear flat. An average change of 0.5°c is a massive deal for an ocean but you can't see that change on a graph with a scale that measures between 0° and 20°
I actually saw a graph the other day that distorted the scale like explained in this video, and immediately thought about this video. Thanks TED ED!
Great to see Ted keeping people informed
2:40 Ironic to include a misleading chart posed as an honest one in a video about misleading charts. The narrator claims that football viewership share has not increased, while showing data for *households with TVs.* There's no direct relationship there; 1% or 100% of households owning TVs, the percentage _of those households_ watching football could be unchanged. It would, however, make a difference in total viewership numbers (the yellow line), as would total population growth, which is mentioned but also missing. In the end, the chart only tracks 2 of the 4 needed data points, ultimately telling us nothing except what the narrator wants us to conclude.
Exactly, I pointed the same thing out about their global warming chart. They're using the same manipulation techniques they disparage.
TED is the spawn of communist NPR. Their left bent is undeniable. Using trucks, football, Obama's first term, and global warming was no coincidence. Massive hypocrites, and look at all these people eating it up.
Ok, so here is the thing, the share of viewership is a direct reference to the definition of “ratings”. They use this because channels, networks and shows compete for ad revenue based on the percentage of tv watchers, since that is the market they are competing in, and the companies want to choose the best place for their ads, and percentages are an easy way to compare their options apples to apples, although they do other calculations internally for targeting specific demographics. Including total population would scew the numbers because if they don’t have a tv, then they are pointless to consider for the ad companies anyway, at least for their tv ad departments, and population growth is discarded because, as mentioned, the companies interested in this data care about the share of viewership, not number of people, especially since it does actually include the number of people since the % on the y axis is a derivation using total population with the stipulating factor of tv ownership since that is the demographic ad companies are interested in for super bowl viewership. The company can simply multiply the percentage by the population, like a middle schooler. There are different structures used when considering total viewership instead of ratings as well in order to include other ways of viewing the super bowl, but those ads and the revenue go to a different place entirely so it is irrelevant to the typical use of these graphs. Your comment is either unintentionally misleading or downright communist depending on your intention. Please refrain from assigning motive without proper evidence or arguments since this legitimately worried me until I spent a few minutes reading your comment and studying the graph and industry in question. You should either do the same if it wasn’t intentional, or, again, refrain.
@@davidtodd7271 Good Lord, nothing I've read is more deserving of the Billy Madison clip following his speech. The TED narrator used the flat curve of Super Bowl viewership in HOUSEHOLDS WITH TV's to conclude that Super Bowl viewership OVERALL is flat. This is 100% deception. They are abusing graphs in the EXACT same way they are complaining about!
Even if you think you're technically correct (you're definitely not), why in the world do you think it's reasonable to critique someone with such horrendous grammar and punctuation?
@@davidtodd7271 tldr;
They probably meant "viewership in percentage [of households with TVs] " (blue) vs. "viewership total in millions" (orange).
Still, I miss the labelling(s) of the y-axis.
0:06 Ted Ed: "A toothpaste brand claims their product will destroy more plaque than any product ever made."
Me: *Immediately remembers the hand wash and sanitizer brands that claim to destroy 99.99% of germs.**
Thumbnail in the thumbnail
Interesting that the first example of misleading data was that they used a compressed scale to exaggerate a tiny difference. The last example was that they failed to use a compressed scale and so failed to exaggerate a tiny difference.
That Chevy ad was just insulting
Check out the book "How to lie with statistics"
thanks Ted-ed, for teaching me about "Cherry Picking" XD
The guy at 3:28 disturbs me
Good. Learnt a significant amount through this video. : In a graph, look at (i) The Labels (ii) The number (iii) The Scale & (iv) The context
Even on a well designed graft, one has to determine whether the changes are driven by correlation or causation of factors.
"well designed graft" - that wouldn't be a *graft* by Trump, then.
*PragerU has entered the chat*
*CNN, Fox News, Al Jazera and all the desinformation agents entered the chat*
Prageru's greatest enemy
0:28 Did TED-Ed predict Trump and COVID-19 graphs?
*0:37
Ted-ed: How many times will you watch this?
Me: *y e s*
In France, a major TV news channel showed a pie graph with 47% of people not supporting a march against a new labour law... with 2/3 of the graph colored. The title was: "The majority of French don't approve this march".
and they showed 32% approved the march with roughly 1/3 (which is honnest) and the 21% "without opinion" was a tiny slice.
Prager U could learn a thing or two from this video.
2:29
That was cool
0:56
Actually, they are. The graph however, needs to be drawn a different way to make this more noticeable.
Instead of having the X-axis show what percent of trucks bought 10 years ago are still on the road, let it represent the number of 10 year old trucks that aren't, the "rate of failure".
If you do that, the failure rate of Chevy trucks is half that of Toyota trucks, about 1.7% vs 3.5%.
This.
This is perhaps the biggest mistake in a Ted-Ed video
@@lordlouckster2315 I'm sure they could've brought up any other genuinely faulty graph, but yeah, they dropped the ball here.
Nevermind, I saw the frog riddle
@@lordlouckster2315 Oh yeah, that one. Go check our mindyourdecision's video on it.
I love that Ted makes such interesting videos, while they all are only about fives minutes long
"Who can argue with graphs"
Antivaccers, Karen's, Chad's, moms and dads in general
Funny that the point of the video is exactly that you should be critical of the data presented to you...
@@SKyrim190 you should be skeptical of everything. It gets me weird looks and people have weird opinion of me but I don't get easily fooled and nor do I spread wrong info...
@@_.Infinity._ yes, I know. I am pointing out to Mr. Zachary that he tried to diminish antivaccers, karens and Chads, however they are all behaving like the video say we should
@@SKyrim190 However there's a big difference between entitlement (Karen), science denial (Antivaxx) and skepticism.
@@raiorai2 Exactly! Thank you.