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Data & numbers

Charts That Lie: Reading Graphs in the Wild

Truncated axes, cherry-picked windows, maps where land votes, bubbles scaled wrong, and the missing error bars — a ten-second pass that defuses them all.

6 parts 21 min total Beginner friendly Updated Jul 2026
Read Part 1 free

Included free with All-Access — $20/year for the whole catalog.

What you'll walk away with

Why the picture argues: shapes land in half a second, before reading starts — and the furniture-before-shape defense.
Axis games: truncated baselines (when they lie, when they're honest), dual-axis tuned correlations, and reading log scales.
Windows and sizes: cherry-picked start dates, the zoom-out reflex, maps that plot acres instead of people, and the radius-vs-area bubble ambush.
What's not shown — denominators, error bars, smoothing, category selection — plus the ten-second reader's pass and the redraw test.

6 parts · 21 min

1
The Picture Argues
3 min
3 min FREE
2
The Y-Axis Games
4 min
4 min
3
The Window: When the Story Starts
3 min
3 min
4
Size Illusions: Maps, Bubbles, and the Tilted Pie
3 min
3 min
5
What's Not Shown: Denominators, Error, and the Missing Chart
4 min
4 min
6
The Reader's Pass (and What Honest Looks Like)
4 min
4 min
Bonus: one-page cheat sheet
Every part's key points, printable — included when you unlock

Read Part 1 free — no account needed. $1 unlocks the remaining 5 parts plus the cheat sheet, forever.

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