CB2200 Business Statistics
Semester A, 2014/2015
Assignment 1: Use and Misuse of Statistics
Team Leader: ____ Chan Cham Kit__________
Student ID
Name
Tutorial Code
53393695
Chan chi kit
T08
53914689
Yeung Tin Pui
T03
53183010
Chan cham ho
T13
Selected Graph:
Source: https://mathspig.wordpress.com/category/lists/10-big-media-maths-errors/
Graphical Accuracy Our team has discovered three major errors on the graph.
First of all, the graph does not have an accurate and clear title. Readers may not have enough understanding on what it is talking about when they first look at the graph. On the other hand, he words ‘Rough and rewarding’ should be erased since it is not a formal title or information on the scale which may cause confusion to readers.
Also, the labels of the vertical and horizontal axis are missing or not clearly specified. For example, on the vertical axis, it doesn’t state clearly which country’s currency it is using like US, Euro or Australian dollars. This may lead to misunderstanding on readers. And on the horizontal axis, the unit ‘year’ is missing here although most of us can guess what it refers to. There is one common mistake on both axes, as they ignore to uses ‘ ’when the scale do not starts from zero.
Next, we can observe that vertical axis of the graph is not drawn on scale. we can see that the scale increases logarithmically with the figure ten as a base. It is not an appropriate and correct axis since the vertical interval between one another is not equally spaced and it will exaggerate the amount of return they gain by investing in Australian shares.
Intention to mislead After analyzing the graph, we conclude that the owner of the graph intent to mislead readers or cause misunderstanding among them. We estimate that he tries to attract investors to invest on Australian shares other than cash and bonds. He intends to enlarge the scale on vertical axis