Adam Silver Just Put on a Clinic in Crisis Management

In reacting to the leaked audio tape of NBA franchise owner Donald Sterling seemingly making inflammatory racist remarks, NBA commissioner Adam Silver put forth a textbook example of how to manage a crisis in general, and a public relations nightmare specifically.

Let us examine how well Mr. Silver did his job to lead, protect the image of the NBA, and address the situation.

Parikh on Misleading Data Visualization

Ravi Parikh of Heap Analytics wrote a nice piece today on lying with data visualization.
 
It is a solid piece showing three ways that data can be misleading when depicted visually, including one absolute whopper of reversing the Y-axis to make an increase in homicide look like a decrease.

I also think the false composition pie chart was informative, as I have not seen that in the past.

Although he alludes to it with the title of his post, I wish Parikh would have mentioned the classic "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff (Norton, 1954). 

Although 60 years old, Huff's book is still worth reading for anyone involved in Marketing or Public Relations. Chapter 5, "The Gee-Whiz Graph" (as illustrated by Irving Geis and shown here) is a break down on Parikh's first example, removing the origin for the Y axis.

And the sixth chapter, on how 2 dimensional images can exaggerate linear differences, is also an example that continues to be used to manipulate.

Thanks, Ravi, for the insight, and for giving me an excuse to pull this gem off the bookshelf today.