Sorry, but you (and parent) seem to be misinformed on all counts. This chart is both entirely normal and makes complete sense for anyone with a financial background, as can rightly be assumed for a Bloomberg or WSJ reader.
- Financial charts commonly don't start at 0%, e.g. look at any stock chart ever. No one ever assumes it does. This is to maximize clarity of differences, otherwise a lot of financial charts would have very small differences on top of very long bars, which would be much harder to read
- Percentage change is the correct metric when the title is "growth slows". If direct revenue were shown then readers would need to compare slopes rather than than heights, which is much harder, confusing, and less clear. (Direct revenue would be appropriate for a chart titled "revenue drops", but this story is about growth, not revenue, so that would be the wrong chart.)
- YoY percentage change is a normal metric to use on a quarterly or monthly basis precisely because it removes seasonal effects, see [1]. There is nothing nonsensical about it whatsoever.
This article and chart assumes a reader who is financially literate. It is not deceptive in any way, but rather follows best practices.
Despite the dripping holier-than-thou tone of your post, I believe it is you who are misinformed:
> Financial charts commonly don't start at 0%, e.g. look at any stock chart ever.
Which is why those types of charts usually are line charts, or candlestick charts. The only reason to do a chart like this as a bar chart is to deliberately overemphasize the size of the difference between the quarters. A bar chart with a non-zero baseline is a horrible way to display this kind of data.
> This is to maximize clarity of differences, otherwise a lot of financial charts would have very small differences on top of very long bars, which would be much harder to read
Well, using a chart with a zeroed axis seems to work just fine for the very next chart in the article.
It’s not holier than though, it’s a simple factual rebuttal.
The purpose of the chart is to highlight change. showing a 0-100% range for data that shifts within a couple of percentage points makes the change difficult to see
The second chart starts at zero because the lower bounds of the data are much closer to zero. It still tops out at 70% to highlight the change.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a line or bars, the data would look nearly flat with a 0-100% range — and for what reason?
It is you who has assigned a special value in your mind to 0 and 100. There is nothing constraining real data to those limits. Growth can be negative or above 100. Those values are no more magical than 12 or 27 or 1444.829.
> the data would look nearly flat with a 0-100% range — and for what reason?
To show honestly that the change is barely noticeable.
An even more useful chart would have a y-axis from -50% to 50%. Then readers could see clearly that revenues were still growing, just not quite as fast as last period and well above any risk of contraction.
>To show honestly that the change is barely noticeable.
Any claim that the chart is misleading would have to show that it is disproportionate relative to the impact of these "barely noticable" changes on discounted future cash flows, which is the rational basis for stock valuation. These changes, if sustained, are potentially very significant.
>Then readers could see clearly that revenues were still growing
But the target audience already knows that because it's a simple headline number. The chart zooms in on a particular aspect that matters a great deal to that audience - for good reason.
>using a chart with a zeroed axis seems to work just fine for the very next chart in the article.
It actually has an axis at around -6, hence why the bars are floating above the axis. Looks like they do this to make it clear which graphs are full range and which are clipped, as the clipped ones touch the axis.
- Financial charts commonly don't start at 0%, e.g. look at any stock chart ever. No one ever assumes it does. This is to maximize clarity of differences, otherwise a lot of financial charts would have very small differences on top of very long bars, which would be much harder to read
- Percentage change is the correct metric when the title is "growth slows". If direct revenue were shown then readers would need to compare slopes rather than than heights, which is much harder, confusing, and less clear. (Direct revenue would be appropriate for a chart titled "revenue drops", but this story is about growth, not revenue, so that would be the wrong chart.)
- YoY percentage change is a normal metric to use on a quarterly or monthly basis precisely because it removes seasonal effects, see [1]. There is nothing nonsensical about it whatsoever.
This article and chart assumes a reader who is financially literate. It is not deceptive in any way, but rather follows best practices.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/y/year-over-year.asp