CHARTPOLICEChart Police

Crime taxonomy · Data selection

Cherry-picked range or omitted data

Showing only the slice of data that supports the story.

What it looks like

The time window, categories or data points are selected to support a narrative, and the rest is left out. Gaps in a continuous axis are hidden instead of marked.

Example

Example (Cherry-picked range or omitted data): Start at an unusually hot year, stop ten years later, and warming disappears.CHERRY-PICKING
The crime. Start at an unusually hot year, stop ten years later, and warming disappears.
The same data shown honestly: The full series with the cherry-picked window highlighted shows the long-term trend.FIXED
The fix. The full series with the cherry-picked window highlighted shows the long-term trend.

Why it is bad

How to fix it

  1. Show the longest relevant history, and highlight the period you want to discuss within it.
  2. Explain why the window starts and ends where it does.
  3. Mark gaps and excluded points explicitly rather than closing them up.
When it is not a crime. Zooming into a recent period is fine when it is labelled as such and the longer context is one click or one chart away.