VisLies

I recently had the pleasure to host another session of VisLies. As an early demonstration of lying with visualization, I presented these 2 graphs taken from data provided by the CDC for US states.1 The first plot seems to suggest that more vaccinations cause more people to die. The second plot, built from the same source data, suggests that more vaccinations prevent deaths. They cannot both be right. The difference is easily explained. [Read More]

As of this writing, China is battling a fierce outbreak of a new coronavirus, which is also threatening to spread to other parts of the world. It’s scary. And that means it is also very important to keep things in perspective. Panicking and overreacting will make things worse for everyone, including yourself. Which brings me to this map showing the spread of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus. This and several more like it have been featured in articles from The Sun. [Read More]

The IEEE Visualization conference is just wrapping up, and this year I had the distinct pleasure of helping Bernice Rogowitz and Georges Grinstein in bringing back the Vis Lies event. It’s my favorite activity at vis that was disappointingly missing the past two years. I’m happy to say that it is back and as much fun as ever. For those who haven’t had the distinct pleasure of attending, Vis Lies is a meeting where we share examples of lying and confusing with visualization. [Read More]