Figures under scrutiny — critique cards
Six figures, each lying in a different way — and each one is a real technique you will meet in a board paper. Cut along the dashed lines, deal one per team. Page 2 is the critique sheet.
Our satisfaction is soaring
"Satisfaction is up sharply. The programme is working."
What is the trick? Redraw it honestly.
Ad spend drives sales
"Sales track ad spend almost perfectly."
What is the trick? Redraw it honestly.
Costs are finally falling
"Unit costs have fallen four quarters running."
What is the trick? Redraw it honestly.
Overall, we improved
"Company-wide performance improved."
What is going on? This one has a name.
We doubled our reach
"Reach doubled year on year."
What is the trick? By how much does the picture overstate it?
Where our problem is
"California is our worst state by far. Send the team there."
What is missing? What would you divide by?
Critique sheet — team ______ · card ____
How this runs
Every team works its card at the same time. Then one team is drawn at random to present at the front while everyone else attacks — and we draw again. You will not know whether you are up. Points for an attack that lands, and you have to name the trick, not just dislike the picture.
Name it: truncated axis · two axes manufacturing a correlation · cherry-picked window · aggregation hiding the subgroups · area scaled by radius · counts where you needed a rate · uneven bins · uneven time spacing
The trick, named
What the figure is entitled to say
Redraw it honestly — and it still has to make a point
Is our own project's key figure at risk of this? How would we know?