Guideline: TO CUT OR NOT TO CUT (THE Y AXIS)
Source: * Rule 25: Always start your bar charts at zero — AddTwo (addtwodigital.com)*
Question:
Dear Community,
I have a problem with the visualisation of financial data. Specifically, it is about the share of “Green Bonds”. For those of you who are not familiar with this: An investor wants to have as high a share of these bonds as possible because they are specifically good.
My visualisation now looks like this:
You can see that the X-axis goes from 0% to 10%. I have found a lot of information that a bar chart should start at zero, otherwise the statement is misleading. My question now is this: Is it also misleading if the bar chart does not go up to 100%? If I were to create the chart from 0% to 100%, the small percentages would no longer be visible. However, if I create the chart from 0%- 10% and another chart from, say, 0%-5% (if the share of green bonds were 4%), the two charts could not be compared.
What is your opinion on this issue? Or does anyone have a suggestion for a visualisation method that is well suited for small percentages?
2 posts - 2 participants
