Homework 6 - Deceptive visualization

Overview: In order to understand the rules we must first break them! In this assignment we’re going to break one of the most fundamental principles of data visualization: honesty. Your goal will be to deceive your readers anyway you can; misleading scales, adversarially chosen aesthetic mappings, perceptual tricks or anything else you can think of. Be careful not to let your innocent reader catch on though! To test your success, you’ll also create an honest visualization of the same data. If your deception is good enough, a reader should not easily be able to tell which is which!

Requirements:

• Choose a public dataset with at least 2 variables and at least 4 observations to visualize.

  • There are no strict restrictions on what dataset you choose, but you should aim to choose a dataset that is unique and insightful.

  • You will likely also want to choose a dataset that requires little preprocessing if possible.

  • Take a look at the data resources page for inspiration.

• Create an honest visualization of this dataset.

  • The specifics of this visualization are up to you, but it should aim to be a high-quality visualization according to all of the metrics we’ve discussed; it will be evaluated using the standard course evaluation criteria.

  • Ideally this visualization would have a takeaway that could be seemingly contradicted by your deceptive visualization.

• Create a separate dishonest visualization of the same dataset

  • This visualization should contain all of the variables shown in the honest visualization (but could contain more!)

  • This visualization should aim to mislead the viewer into coming to a false conclusion about the data.

  • Avoid explicitly lying in the visualization. Ideally a careful reader would be able to suss out the deception, but a casual reader would be deceived.

  • You may use a caption to reinforce your deception, but again avoid explicitly lying.

• In your submission, randomize the order of the two visualizations (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=flip+a+coin). Then, on a separate page, include a few sentences explaining which is which and the intent of the deception.

• Cite and provide a link to the source of the dataset used.

You should follow the standard instructions for submitting this assignment on Canvas.