Vol. 4 · Survey SpecialPrice: one gold starEditor: you
Can a graph lie about pets?
Pet love is falling!
Theo's graph of our class survey says Room 4 is going off pets. Maya says the graph is lying. The paper prints tomorrow, and you're the editor.
Theo's graph. Tap a ? on the line to see what it says lives there.
The line drops from dog to lizard. Theo says that's a trend. But what is halfway between a cat and a fish?
“It goes down, down, down. Kids like pets less and less. Front page!”
“Less and less as you go from… dog to lizard? That's not a time. That's just the order you typed them.”
Before you can decide who's right, there's a pile of survey answers on your desk. Some answers are words, some are numbers, and the kind of answer decides the kind of graph. Start there.
Editor's rule #1: nothing gets printed until the graph fits the data.
Desk 1 · The survey pile
Words or numbers?
Each slip is one survey question with a few answers. Tap a slip, then tap the tray it belongs in. Words answers sort people into groups. Numbers answers were counted or measured, so you could add them up or find the biggest.
Pick a slip to start.
Desk 2 · The shuffle test
Can you shuffle it?
Pets are words answers. Nobody said dog comes before cat. So try this: shuffle the pets into a new order and see what each graph says now.
Shuffle a few times. Watch the headline under each graph.
Now Maya's sunflower. She measured it every Monday. Weeks are numbers that come in order: week 3 really is after week 2. Shuffle those.
“It grew every single week. The line even shows it growing in between, on the Wednesday.”
The shuffle test
You can shuffle it (pets, colours, buses): the answers are groups. Draw bars with gaps between them. Any order tells the same story.
You can't shuffle it (weeks, days, ages): the numbers come in order. A line can join the dots, because there really is something in between.
Theo's pet line only "fell" because of the order he typed. Shuffle it and the "trend" flips. That's how a graph lies.
Desk 3 · Editor's desk
Six stories, two graphs each
For every story, Theo and Maya each hand in a graph. Stamp the one that fits the data, then say why. Wrong graphs get spiked.