Saturday, March 14, 2020

Trump sent his followers a signed chart; I'm doing the same with mine

It seems that President Trump is (mis)using the copy of How Charts Lie I sent him months ago to thank him for the free publicity he's given me—the review in The Economist mentioned this fact in its last paragraph.

According to CNN, Trump sent the following chart to his fans and followers. His point is that the markets experienced a rapid recovery after his press conference about the coronavirus yesterday, Friday 13. The vertical black line on the right-hand side of the chart marks the time of that press conference:


It's hard to see, but the chart shows fluctuations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average just on Friday 13, which I don't think is sufficient information. This is a case of convenient cherry-picking. I decided to send my followers my own signed chart, this one showing the variation since January 1 2020, as Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization of the first cases of coronavirus at the end of December of 2019. I also added some annotations:

I sincerely want to thank President Trump again for all his efforts to promote How Charts Lie. Whenever he tweets a map or a chart, I think that sales increase.