Next, I generated the layout using D3, using JSFiddle to host the content.

Here are some of the lies embedded in the product:

• The way the donut changes as the underlying datum changes seems proportional, but I intentionally obfuscate the exact way of reproportioning.

o People would first think the donut is like a pie chart and that the percentages match some whole. It does not.

o People think that there is a direct correlation between budget allotted and circle size. There is, but I never explain the function that represents the value. Because I do not show the scale, I can misrepresent the values while keeping the illusion of proportion.

• People would think that 1966 is some sort of ‘start’, ‘average value’, or ‘anchor’ to NASA's budget. It is not. It is its peak, so everything past that looks relatively smaller.

• Lastly, one more deception this visualization uses is a lack of a normalizing factor; the values for the budget are not adjusted for inflation. If I had used the proper set of values, the viewer would see a less drastic trend.

Reflection

I learned that there are many ways to show data in a grossly misrepresentative way, and there are gross uses of data visualization tools to skew data in such biased manners. It was upsettingly easy to get the visualization to say the trend I wanted. Besides the Apollo program, the budget given to NASA remained relatively stable, but the viewer would think of the dropoff as drastic and tending toward zero. Using pie charts and a slider rather than more traditional bar charts with timelines makes obfuscation easy. Making labels ambiguous at best and nonexistent at worst leaves the data presented up for interpretation, and hence it is easy for the visualizer to lead the viewer to a false interpretation. Even then, there is no use in representing data if the data itself is flawed. There is a reason “statistics” is on the same rank with “lies” and “damned lies” in presenting an argument.

I would have liked to make a 3-D pie chart to further warp the illusion of proportions, but there is only so much I can do in a 2-D environment with an insightful library creator. That would have just made the project that much more egregious.