New study suggests that when forecasting trends, reading a bar chart versus a line graph biases our judgement

A new study suggests that the format in which graphs are presented may be biasing people into being too optimistic or pessimistic about the trends the graphs display. Academics found that when people made predictions about how a trend would develop over time, they made lower judgements when the trend was presented as a 'bar chart' type graph than when exactly the same data was presented as a line graph or a graph consisting of a set of data points only.

from Top Technology News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/5qFy3up