As the exercise is designed to illustrate both of these charts are the same data set. At first glance though, they appear to be polar opposites. In an era of flash media, and “shocking” statistics, simply changing the order the data is presented in could easily sway a reader to look at it differently.
I played with the ‘reverse’ tool on the x axis. So, although the data is the same as chart 1 it appears as if percent is going down by flipping the years. I am unsure if this a statistically correct way to present years on a line graph – but, something tells me that those who ‘lie’ with stats. are not always following all the “rules”. In addition by allowing the y-axis to illustrate a larger span of percentages in the second chart the line does not appear to be drastic by starting at the bottom of a chart and raising. instead it appears to illustrate less drastic change by remaining in the middle of the chart.
Jack, asked in class if we recognized anything about his racial change chart that may have been done on purpose to present a viewer with “guided” interpretation of the results. What I noticed after further examining the chart is:
1. the percentage values associated with a color in the middle of the data from 90% white residence to 10% white residence are in 15% increments. So, for a color to change with in those figures it would have to be a substantial difference of a 15% racial population change.
2. In contrast – the highest and lowest percentages have color changes on the map at just 2% racial population change, 100% to 98% white reflects a color change, as well as 0% white population to 2% white population results in color change.
3. Data sets between 90% to 98% white population and 2% to 10% white population are alone in a reflecting a color change at an 8% racial population shift.
I can only speculate why this was done, but I would not have noticed it had I not been told to look closely at the map.