Comically poor color coding of bar charts in a survey on ten fears and phobias

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article by Peter Raven at YouGov on February 27, 2023 titled What do Britons say they have a phobia of? The first graphic he showed (see above for my comical version) had me laughing. The usual stereotyped way to show gender is to use pink for Female, blue for Male, and purple (their sum) for Everyone. But he used pink for Britons and purple for Females!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That stereotype is shown above, as is a typical monochrome color coding for intensity in stacked bar charts. Don’t Know should be gray and come last.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, as shown above (in another comical version), on a stacked bar chart he instead put Don’t Know in the middle, and shifted colors from red to purple. And for Not Scared At All he reused the same shade of purple that had represented Female in the first chart! That stacked bar chart has other issues which I will discuss later in another post.  

 

The cartoon man was borrowed from here at Wikimedia Commons.