Question

Internet Doctors: Graph The accompanying graph was created to depict the results of the survey described in Exercise 1. Is the graph somehow misleading? If so, how?

Short answer

Because the vertical scale starts at 800 instead of 0, the disparity between "yes" and "no" responses is considerably exaggerated. This creates a wrong impression for the readers. Thus, the graph is misleading.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

A bar chart is displayed showing the number of adults who said “yes” and “no” to a question in a survey.

Deceptive graph

In a bar graph, it is very important for the vertical scale to begin from 0.The lengths of the bar are drawn according to the numbers on the vertical scale. Moreover, the length of the bar represents the frequency of the corresponding category.

If the vertical scale does not begin from 0, the difference in the frequencies of the categories is greatly exaggerated.

Here, the vertical scale begins from 800 and not 0. This results in a false impression in the minds of the readers that there is a great difference in the number of adults who said “yes” and who said “no” when the actual difference is not that large.

Thus, the graph is misleading.