It's interesting to see the y-axis scaling example, because the author uses it to sell as incomplete a truth as the document he's criticizing.<p>> displaying the data with a zero-baseline y-axis tells a more accurate picture, where interest rates are staying static.<p>This is not true of all data, or even interest rates. Who's to say that a 0.01 increase in interest rate <i>doesn't</i> translate to large differences in money? If this is true (and it depends a lot on the intended audience for the chart), then representing it with a zero baseline is far more deceptive and the "bad" chart does a better job showing that the small increases are in fact getting steadily bigger.<p>The problem is that data alone is not sufficient to say anything, and the context (in this case, noise in interest rate changes) is too important to give a single rule for your scale. How you interpret context, of course, depends on what you're selling.