Fox News Tricks With Graphics [View all]

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http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-charts-tricks-data-2012-11


Jeff Leek at Simply Statistics has a great post that explains how Fox News presents data in a really tricky way.

A lot of the issue comes in the way the data is presented. While most of the time the data is grounded in fact, by skewing the axes, using the wrong kind of chart, or just changing where the points should be on the graph, Fox is able to change the way that the information is interpreted.

As one example, Leek points out this pie chart. When you add up the numbers, it exceeds 100 percent, making a pie chart a poor choice.


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In this Fox News chart, the axis starts at 34%. When looked at it this way, it appears that taxes will be five times higher than they are now if the cuts expire. In reality, that isn't the case: