Infodesign Ethics Exercise B Female [ Male 100 75 - s g 3 %0 o ¢ g e 25 [ 0 — — Alghanistan Bangladesh Belarus International Countries Figure 5. A chart depicting literacy rates in international countries According to Figure 5, women in Afghanistan have the lowest percentage of literacy rates compared to the other countries. One might mistakenly assume that women in Afghanistan are the most iliterate in the world; however, the data set has 213 countries, so the ones on the chart above are only a sample. A reader may misinterpret this chart to mean that there isn't another country with lower literacy rates even though the representation from the author is unintentional. This chart would be appropriate in a report about only these three countries (as opposed to the much broader category “international countries”), if that report also explained why those countries were selected and are being compared. When planning your report, consider that people will assume that a sample of the data stands in for the whole data set. Even If the readers look at the other data, the visualized data will be more memorable. Since the genre of technical report writing requires brevity and succinct delivery of information, you can choose only a limited amount of data from the data set to support your argument. The data you choose will represent the entire dataset. By selecting specific pieces, you impact how your audience understands the big picture. In short, your audience will assume that the visual you create is representative of the whole data set.
