Comment by vb-8448
4 days ago
It gives you a wrong perspective, especially if you are distracted, on model capabilities: Fable 5.1 is not 30% better than Sol, but is the very first impression you get when you look at the first graph.
If I'm not wrong OAI tried a similar trick when GPT5 was announced ... they have been criticized a lot.
> It gives you a wrong perspective, especially if you are distracted, on model capabilities
Only if you aren't schooled in reading graphs. It's a given that you always have to look at the axes when interpreting a graph.
How exactly would you zoom into a section of a graph and just show that section?
> Only if you aren't schooled in reading graphs ...
So we can say the same about the authors "AA’s plot is misleading" claim, he is "not schooled in reading graphs"?
> How exactly would you zoom into a section of a graph and just show that section?
When building a chart is good practice to provide log scale switch and zoom&pan capabilities, so the reader can decide how to look at it.
> So we can say the same about the authors "AA’s plot is misleading" claim, he is "not schooled in reading graphs"?
Oh absolutely - as other commenters have pointed out.
> When building a chart is good practice to provide log scale switch and zoom&pan capabilities, so the reader can decide how to look at it.
For the majority of the time charts have existed, your "good practice" would have been impossible. Charts have historically been static images (e.g. published in a journal). So there have been conventions on how to depict them - and at times it is very appropriate to start from something other than 0.
Here's an article from the UK's Office For National Statistics:
https://digitalblog.ons.gov.uk/2016/06/27/does-the-axis-have...
4 replies →
Not starting at zero has long been used entirely intentionally in order to mislead people, particularly the general public.