Question: Read the article “How to Display Data Badly,” by Howard Wainer. It was published in the American Statistician in 1984, volume 38, pages 137-147. You can find it here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2683253. It is a quick, informative, and (dare I say?) enjoyable read.

Next, scour the Internet (or if you are feeling particularly plucky, look through your company’s annual report!) to find an example of a poorly made or misleading graph and post it to the conference, pointing out where you think the graph went awry. All the better if you can find a health related graph.

Reproduce the data using a better (more illuminating, more honest, etc) graph format. You may have to do some guesswork on what the underlying data actually are.

Don't forget to complete all three required steps:

Post an example of a poorly made graph. Don't forget to cite the source of your graph, and please do not post a duplicate of a graph already posted by one of your classmates.

Provide a brief discussion of what makes the graph a poor one. A couple of sentences should suffice.

Redo the graph (probably using Excel), making sure to correct the faults you identified in the original.