Displaying Data 59 Table 2.9: Sometimes, a Simple Table Is Better Than a Cluttered Graph [16] Content of Front-Page Articles Watergate Inflation Government competence Confidence in government Government power Crime Race Unemployment Shortages of energy or food Number of Articles 537 415 322 266 154 123 103 100 68 Percent of Articles That Criticized a Specific Person or Policy 49 28 30 52 42 30 25 13 16 bars refer to nine types of articles from the front pages of U.S. newspapers, with the heights of the bars showing the percentage of the articles in each category that were critical of a specific person or policy. The order in which the categories are presented is arbitrary; there is no reason, for example, why the inflation bar should precede rather than follow the unemployment bar. The pattern in the bars--dipping, rising, then dipping again--reveals no useful information. It would be more sensible to arrange the bars from tallest to smallest. The bar labels along the horizontal axis are abbreviated and jumbled together, making it