A chain letter circulating reminded me that I'm having a week protesting about dodgy statistics or math. I finally rebelled in a faculty Learning and Teaching Committee when I saw some data for the umpteenth time culled from a survey of students. It's a bar chart showing student satisfaction across some 30 or so subject areas at the university. (e.g. the civil engineers doing well on the left with high student satisfaction, mechanical engineers in dead trouble on the right with 'low' student satisfaction.

But if you look at the axis up the left side (I can never remember if it's X or Y), you'll see that it doesn't run from 1 to 5 (which is what the students can tick), it runs from 3.0 to 4.8. Which of course makes any minor variations look really large.

I've been in several forums (fora?) where this chart has been discussed from very local library things to university wide conferences and the like. And no one has pointed that out. So it was with some trepidation I dared to say anything in a committee particularly as it included the head of the mathematics department! So I was quite relieved when he backed it up as a good point and they decided to take it up with the powers that be. I think the Mech Eng head almost managed to look relieved over them for a change. I mean really, how much do one lot on 3.8 have to flagellate themselves because they didn't achieve the 4.2 of another lot?