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Chad Skelton
Personal blog · chadskelton.comdatadesign
Chad Skelton's personal blog at chadskelton.com covers data and design. Since 2017, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times, most often “Bar charts should always start at zero. But what about line charts? (2018)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Chad Skelton's blog for chart design guidance, including when bar charts should start at zero and when zooming in on line charts makes sense. One comment uses it to counter a general rule.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Telling stories with data
Most-linked posts?
- Bar charts should always start at zero. But what about line charts? (2018)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-11
What Hacker News says?
Disagree, at least when stated this generally. This article is explaining it thorougly: http://www.chadskelton.com/2018/06/bar-charts-should-always-... (The article you linked is not accessible to non-medium users, by the way. Apologies if it covers caveats.) For bar charts it's a good rule of thumb. For line charts, not necessarily. Scroll down to the cases where it makes sense to zoom in. Imagine you plot the glob…
Comment linking /2018/06/bar-charts-should-always-start-at-zero.html
on “Mistral: Mixtral of Experts”Submitted A data visualization reading (and watching) list as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bar charts should always start at zero. But what about line charts? (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion