balanced one anotherand led to the same conclusion as if they were all correct calhoun' (perhaps willfullyspurious response to adams was based on classical errorthe assumption of independence were he more sophisticated mathematicallyhe might have said something like" believe that the measurement errors are unbiased and independent of each of otherand therefore evenly distributed on either side of the mean in factlater analysis showed that the errors were so heavily biased that no statistically valid conclusions could be drawn pictures can be deceiving there can be no doubt about the utility of graphics for quickly conveying information howeverwhen used carelessly (or maliciouslya plot can be highly misleading considerfor examplethe following charts depicting housing prices in the midwestern states looking at the chart on the leftit seems as if housing prices were pretty stable from - but wait minutewasn' there collapse of residential real estate followed by global financial crisis in late there was indeedas shown in the chart on the right these two charts show exactly the same databut convey very different impressions the first chart was designed to give the impression that housing prices had been stable on the -axisthe designer used logarithmic scale ranging from the absurdly low average price for house of $ , to the improbably high average price of $ million this minimized the amount of space devoted to the area where prices are changinggiving the impression that the changes were relatively small the chart above and on the right was designed to give the impression that housing prices moved erraticallyand then crashed the we should note that calhoun was in office over years ago it goes without saying that no contemporary politician would find ways to abuse statistics to support position