The following graph shows the number of customers who purchased something from a store in September and October. What is misleading about the graph?
(Image: The bar graph is titled "Customers per Month"
The horizontal axis shows labels for September and October.
The Vertical axis is labeled Number of Customers. The axis is equally spaced after a break between 0 and 200. From 200 to 207 the graph axis is equally scaled by ones.
The bar for September reaches 202. The bar for October reaches 206.)
1 year ago
1 year ago
a.The bars do not touch.
b.The intervals on the vertical axis between 200 and 207 are not even.
c.The graph exaggerates the difference in the number of customers between September and October.
d.The graph is not misleading.
1 year ago
c.The graph exaggerates the difference in the number of customers between September and October.
7 months ago
The misleading aspect of the graph is the scale of the vertical axis, specifically the break and the scaling of the graph after the break.
In this graph, the vertical axis shows the number of customers, with equally spaced intervals after a break between 0 and 200. However, after the break, the scale suddenly changes to one unit per interval. This can create a misleading impression of a larger difference between the bars for September (202) and October (206).
To accurately interpret the graph, it is important to pay attention to the scaling of the vertical axis. In this case, the change from 202 to 206 on the graph is just a difference of 4 customers, which is much smaller than it may appear due to the scaling of the graph.