How to Lie with Graphs: The NY Times as Real Estate Case Study
October 3, 2007 – 11:07 am | by Erik HersmanThe New York Times just released a new graph showing the housing bubble. The only problem is, they have intentionally skewed the way the chart reads to make their bubble look even bigger and more extreme.
Nat Torkington points this out:
“In effect, they’ve zoomed in on the area from 100-150 and magnified the growth in the last 15 years.”
We very well might be in a housing bubble, that doesn’t excuse the NY Times creation of a misleading and overly sensational chart.
The Calculated Risk blog breaks down the errors and omissions even further and then shows what the graph should really look like if the NY Times wasn’t intentionally trying to magnify the negatives:
