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.

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 ...

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.

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 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 ...