We find that the group who read the information on a logarithmic scale has a much lower level of comprehension of the graph: only 40.66% of them could respond correctly to a basic question about ...

Excel defaults to a linear scale for graphs, but you can easily change it to logarithmic to suit wide data ranges or logarithmic phenomena. The Chart Wizard produces graphs with linear scales.

In “ When Should I Use Logarithmic Scales in My Charts and Graphs ”, I showed the revenues of the top 60 Forbes 500 companies using both linear and logarithmic scales.

Graphs that are not drawn to scale mislead the reader. This post shows another example of a graph where the visual representation of the numbers is not proportional to the numbers themselves.

In a regular linear scale graph -- the type of scale everyone is used to seeing on a daily basis in everything from the Dow Jones Index to your quarterly sales numbers -- each point on the ...