2013-09-29
Explanation
This comic satirizes the misuse of statistics and misleading graphs in media. A professor-like figure explains what he calls the "fundamental law of media graph construction": that any two things that look correlated on a graph are casually related in real life. He then reveals the trick -- any two data sets can be made to appear correlated by simply having two different Y-axes and scaling them until the lines "kinda look like each other." By this method, any two unrelated trends can be forced into an apparent causal relation for the purposes of an article, book, or speech.
A student in the audience asks, "Why do you think people trust the news less than ever?" The professor responds by pointing to a graph on the blackboard that purports to show the relationship between two trends, declaring: "According to this graph, penguins are at fault." This is the punchline -- the professor uses the very technique he just described (a misleading dual-axis graph) to blame penguins for declining trust in media, perfectly demonstrating the absurdity of the method.
This comic references a real and well-documented problem in data journalism and statistics. Dual-axis charts are frequently criticized because they allow the presenter to manipulate the visual relationship between two data sets by adjusting the scales. The website "Spurious Correlations" by Tyler Vigen famously catalogs examples of unrelated data that appear correlated when graphed together, such as the correlation between Nicolas Cage films and swimming pool drownings. The votey shows the author figure (Weinersmith) shaking his cane at the media, adding a humorous "old man yells at cloud" energy to the critique.