As someone who deals with data visualization for a living, I mostly agree. But also, it’s fine to do this as long as you have some sort of visual indicator to show that the data continues down to 0 as opposed to leaving it like it is in the chart above. If you need to be able to show the details in the data that is present higher up, removing the extra numbers where data isn’t present is a good way to do so. But again, you need some kind of indication that you have done so or you’re just being deceiving.
Heights are potentially a good example of that. Iirc, the standard deviation of height is only about 3 inches (for women), so doing the full y-axis would make small differences between groups impossible to visually compare.
As someone who deals with data visualization for a living, I mostly agree. But also, it’s fine to do this as long as you have some sort of visual indicator to show that the data continues down to 0 as opposed to leaving it like it is in the chart above. If you need to be able to show the details in the data that is present higher up, removing the extra numbers where data isn’t present is a good way to do so. But again, you need some kind of indication that you have done so or you’re just being deceiving.
Heights are potentially a good example of that. Iirc, the standard deviation of height is only about 3 inches (for women), so doing the full y-axis would make small differences between groups impossible to visually compare.
How about a chart starting at 0, then cropping the bottom ¾ − not showing the full body but with heads in proportion?
If these women have such similar heights, what on earth is the point in showing the differences between them so misleadingly starkly?
Didn’t it need a zigzag line at the bottom to indicate that the numbers are cut short?
Could you give some examples done well of a visualization with a y-axis that doesn’t represent 0? I’m curious what that would look like