How Charts Lie by Alberto Cairo

**A leading data visualization expert explores the negative - and positive - influences that charts have on our perception of truth.**

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous - and easier to share than ever. While such visualizations can better inform us, they can also deceive by displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns - or simply misinform us by being poorly designed, such as the confusing “eye of the storm” maps shown on TV every hurricane season.

Many of us are ill equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate visuals to promote their own agendas. Public conversations are increasingly driven by numbers, and to make sense of them we must be able to decode and use visual information. By examining contemporary examples ranging from election-result infographics to global GDP maps and box-office record charts, *How Charts Lie* teaches us how to do just that.

It provides basic ideas on making and reading charts that everyone in this information, disinformation, misinformation age should know. It's not 100% introductory since it assumes some very basic knowledge of statistics like mean and median, but it's very readable for the general public.
What I enjoyed the most were the many examples made to accompany the many ideas and advices presented.

This is quite a good contemporary look at chart design and literacy. I've been reading a lot about data visualization and chart design over the past few months, mostly the work of E. Tufte. I've been frustrated by the datedness of Tufte's work and the lack of practical focus.

While Cairo here is more concerned with chart literacy, rather than teaching chart design, there are lessons that can be applied to design and execution. Chapter 1's basic breakdown of “How Charts Work” is great reading even for someone familiar with statistics and the visual communication of data.

Some of Cairo's writing gets a little long-winded and a little too granular, mostly in the second half of the book, but I think these can be forgiven. Some of the topics are political (as they would be!) and it seems like Cairo spends a little too much time trying to state his neutrality and engaging in both-sidesism that is probably not needed.

My copy is an apparently unread 1st edition hardback that comes complete with a stapled trifold press release from the publisher, leading me to wonder if this was an advanced copy or from some event. Regardless, the first edition has a few type issues and more noticeable layout and printing issues. These are thankfully addressed in an online errata by Cairo. The press release happens to be a very succinct summary of the book that would do well as a quick reference sheet for the practitioner hoping to apply the book's lessons.