Page:Online Statistics Education.pdf/72

 Figure 5. A redrawing of Figure 2 with a lie factor greater than 8.

Another distortion in bar charts results from setting the baseline to a value other than zero. The baseline is the bottom of the Y-axis, representing the least number of cases that could have occurred in a category. Normally, but not always, this number should be zero. Figure 6 shows the iMac data with a baseline of 50. Once again, the differences in areas suggests a different story than the true differences in percentages. The number of Windows-switchers seems minuscule compared to its true value of 12%. 72