The gallery of misleading charts
Misleading charts, collected and explained.
Real charts with truncated axes, cherry-picked timeframes, and distorted proportions. Each comes with a short account of the technique it uses and what the same data looks like drawn plainly. A new chart is added every day.
Same data, two stories
Misleading
94
95
ThemUs
+1 point, drawn 3× taller.
- 34
- charts on the wall
- 16
- techniques catalogued
- 1
- new chart every day
On the wall
The most recent additions to the gallery — one new chart every day.
The field guide
16 techniques, grouped by type. Every chart in the gallery is tagged with at least one, and the same handful account for most of them.
Axis crimes
Where most chart lies begin: the humble axis, bent until the data confesses.
Size & scale
When 2× somehow looks like 8×. Your eye reads ink, not numbers.
Cherry-picking
The data shown is real. The data missing is the story.
Framing & context
Technically true, practically misleading.
- The missing denominatorMore of everything happens in California. More people live there.
- The shrinking yardstickEvery year is a record year when the dollar does the climbing.
- Spurious correlationMargarine consumption and the divorce rate in Maine: a love story.
- Strategic binningThe map whose color breaks were drawn after the data arrived.
- Phantom precisionn = 6, error bars sold separately.
Most misleading charts aren't malicious.
Software defaults, deadlines, and unchecked axes account for more of them than bad intent does. The write-ups here describe the techniques rather than the motives — the distortion works the same either way, and so does spotting it.
About the project