Week 11: Information Graphics: Who says data and graphs must be boring?

2)      Compare the two graphs below. What is the ethical problem here?

Figure 1



Figure 2

If you can see, there is ethical problem in these two charts. The main ethical problem presented in the 2 graphs is the way InformationWeek displayed the bar charts. The bar chart represents the number incorrectly. Therefore, it affects the data as a whole.

When I do research on numbers of respondents, I’ve found out that there is inadequate number against the total of 400 respondents. For example, I calculate the 80% of the respondents who agreed that Windows software are quality and vulnerable that shown in Figure 1. This equates to 320 respondents. Then, we can assume that among the mentioned figure, there are also some who has ‘no concerns’ about Windows since this survey allows multiple responses. It is not acceptable if 1 of the 320 respondents who had chosen first option also choose the option ‘no concerns’, because these two options contradict each other. It is not possible for someone to choose ‘no concern’ option if he/she already had concerns about Windows.

This is also occurs in the Figure 2. I calculated the 35% of the respondents who agreed Lunix lack of a clear product road map, which equates to 140 respondents. If we calculated all the percentage of the respondents, the responses they give are actually not the same as the actual total of 400 respondents. Therefore, these two bar charts are not ethical as they allowed multiple responses, as they can create confusion to audiences.