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Towards a Theory of Bullshit Visualization

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arxiv 2109.12975 v1 pith:TIY54JCB submitted 2021-09-23 cs.GL cs.HC

Michael Correll This is my paper · ORCID
classification cs.GLcs.HC
keywords bullshitvisualizationchartsabsentacademicactualattentioncommon
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In this unhinged rant, I lay out my suspicion that a lot of visualizations are bullshit: charts that do not have even the common decency to intentionally lie but are totally unconcerned about the state of the world or any practical utility. I suspect that bullshit charts take up a large fraction of the time and attention of actual visualization producers and consumers, and yet are seemingly absent from academic research into visualization design.

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Cited by 1 Pith paper

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  1. "Trust Junk" Leads to Unjustified Support for Highly Discriminatory Predictive Models

    cs.HC 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Accurate but irrelevant 'trust junk' in AI explanations made crowdsourced users trust and agree with a deliberately discriminatory model more.

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