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Bitcoin ad was literally a chart crime (marketwatch.com)
9 points by bryanrasmussen on Sept 6, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


Log axes for highly-variable or compounded-growth data are not only valuable for showing low-scale movements, but greatly reduce apparent growth. They're commonly used in financial data.

Compare:

Linear scale: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=oMZ6

Log scale: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=oMZi


You can compare them here, https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/historical-price/

Maybe I am wrong, but Isnt log scale the standard for investing charts?

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/logvslinear.asp


For readers from outside the UK, you should understand that the 'authority' here isn't really a government body, and never really issues punishments.

They pretty much embarrass companies into having good honest ads, and mostly it works. No company wants to be called out on having a dishonest ad by them.


Doesn't a log scale make the price increase look lower?


Yes, but also makes it look much more stable which is disingenuous, esp. with something notoriously volatile like bitcoin.


But long-term financial asset charts are supposed to always be log scale...




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