The gallery of misleading charts
A growing collection of real-world charts that stretch axes, shop for timeframes, and torture pies — each one exhibited with a plain-English account of the trick, and what the honest version would look like. No lectures. Just receipts.
15 ways a chart can lie to you, catalogued by genre. Every exhibit in the gallery is charged with at least one.
Where most chart lies begin: the humble axis, bent until the data confesses.
When 2× somehow looks like 8×. Your eye reads ink, not numbers.
The data shown is real. The data missing is the story.
Technically true, practically misleading.
The latest exhibits, freshly framed and fully charged.
Apple’s 2013 keynote plotted cumulative iPhone sales — a running total that rises by construction — right as quarterly sales fell for the second straight quarter.
US margarine consumption and Maine’s divorce rate, overlaid on hand-tuned dual axes until a 0.99 correlation looks like a national scandal.
A top tax rate rising from 35% to 39.6%, drawn so the taller bar stands nearly six times the shorter one.
Most misleading charts aren't malicious — they're defaults, deadlines, and a y-axis nobody double-checked. This site exists so you can spot the difference in the wild, whoever made it and whyever it happened.
About the project