Distortions

All charts do not start at zero

Contrary to what you might have read in How to Lie with Statistics ...

Show the global temperature with a range of zero to 100 and then with a reasonable range of 54-58.

Poor aspect ratio

When try to wedge information into a space that constraints or exaggerates our ability to show the data, we often mislead the reader into seeing a misrepresentation of the data.

Take this data on aging...

Is it a distortion if it highlights the intended information?

Economic data scatterplot example