Nobody is ever going to mistake me for Edward Tufte, but whenever I run across a chart like this one:
(from Matt Yglesias, who got it from Justin Fox where it was merely one of many equally horrible plots), I find myself distracted from the actual point of the graph by the awfulness of the presentation.
I mean, look at this thing. The numerical labels for the horizontal axis are up at the top, rather than at the bottom where they usually go. The label that states what’s actually plotted on that axis is down at the bottom of the graph, where it appears to be just a stray bit of text labelling nothing, while the explanation of what is on the vertical axis is presented as a sort of subtitle (while the axis itself gets only the uninformative label “Percent”), directly above the numerical labels of the horizontal axis, making it look like the percent change in nonfarm employment is plotted on the horizontal axis. As if that weren’t enough, the horizontal axis labels are sideways, for no earthly reason I can think of, so you have to turn your head to read them.
And you know what the worst part of this graph is? The little “Time” graphic down at the bottom right. Because that means that somebody from a major news media organization had a hand in making or approving this graphic. A graph that I would jump all over in a first-year undergraduate lab report has the official stamp of approval of a major media organization.
And people wonder why the public isn’t better informed.