How to "Lie" with Data - Global Warming Name Goal: To understand how the way a graph is set up can influence the perception of the reader. Introduction: One of the most important skills that you can learn in a science class is how to interpret data. There are multiple ways that people can set up a graph to manipulate your thinking. Today you will be learning about these techniques so that you will not be tricked if someone tries this technique on you. With changes in social media and how news and ads are pushed to your phone to match your internet viewing preferences - we are ALL receiving biased information every day. Today you are going to learn how to not be tricked by biased information and how to look at a graph and see the techniques the author is using to try to get you to think a certain way. Trick Number 1: Changing the Scale It is a perfectly acceptable technique in both math and science to "zoom" in on a graph, to emphasize to the reader a certain aspect of the graph. This is used when a small numerical change makes a large impact on the outcomes. For example the pH scale which ranges from 0-14 shows how acidic or basic a substance is. Human blood should have a pH of about 7.4 if it changes to just .2 it can kill a person. This is an example of a small change making a large impact, so if you were going to have a machine graph a person's blood pH during surgery you would want to "zoom" in close the the range between 7.2 and 7.6. 1) Take out graph's A and B. They both represent a 10 year period in the 1970's. Although the graphs represent the same data, the appearance is different. a) In which graph does it appear that the global temperature was increasing? b) What caused the temperature line to look different in the two graphs? c) How would you describe the trend for carbon dioxide in graph A? Graph B