#1945: Scientific Paper Graph Quality

XKCD comic, described below.
Transcript

[Title above a graph:]

General quality of charts and graphs in scientific papers

[A graph is shown. The y-axis is labeled "bad" at the origin and "good" near the arrowhead at its top. The x-axis is a timeline labeled with each decade from the 1950s to the 2010s.]

[The graph has a mostly positive slope, except that it makes a deep U shape from the early 1990s (perhaps 1993) through around 2015. This portion has a grey background and is labeled the "PowerPoint/MSPaint era".]


(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)

The worst are graphs with qualitative, vaguely-labeled axes and very little actual data.

ExplainOriginal