Today I saw a figure posted on Nate Silver’s website that is a good example of an accidentally misleading visualization. The intended point of the chart is that most men in Glamour Magazine have some form of facial hair.
60% of men on the @glamourmag list have stubble or a beard. http://t.co/qzjTSb02tx pic.twitter.com/yGujPNyf0Y
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) April 16, 2014
Instead, what immediately comes across is that most men in Glamour Magazine are clean-shaven. The figure forces the reader to first group facial hair categories before it becomes obvious that most men maintain some form of facial hair.
Here are a couple of different approaches I think are better. By listing the facial hair categories first and using color to help the reader group them, figure A requires minimal changes to the original visualization. Figure B groups the facial hair categories to show that clean-shaven is in fact in the minority. Figure C adds color to really emphasize that the comparison is between facial hair and clean-shaven. In figures B and C I think that the numbers are optional.
