Data & Visual Stories
📋 What it is
Data journalism turns numbers into clear charts and stories — but a misleading chart can distort the truth.
🗣️ Coach says
Numbers can reveal or deceive. A good chart makes a real pattern clear; a bad one (chopped axis, cherry-picked years) fakes one. Read the axis and the source before you trust a graph.
🧠 Memory hook
Charts can reveal OR deceive. Check the axis and the source.
😂 Giggle
What's a newspaper's favorite type of music?
Headline news — it always tops the charts!
😲 Whoa!
A common trick is starting a bar chart’s axis at 90 instead of 0 — a tiny difference looks huge.
✅ Quick check: Name one way a chart can be misleading even if its numbers are true.
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
Examples: an axis that doesn’t start at zero, cherry-picked time ranges, or a scale that exaggerates small differences.
Reading charts critically is a key data-literacy skill.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Find a chart and check: does its axis start at zero? What’s the source?