A Lesson in How to Fudge Charts, Courtesy of Rick Scott's Office

By Matthew Hendley Mon., Nov. 28 2011 at 4:51 PM

Categories: Great Scott!

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Gov. Rick Scott's office introduced its monthly chart comparing private-sector job gains against government job gains, and it just didn't look right.

Remember, there were 6,900 more government jobs in October than in September, while the number of private-sector jobs increased by 2,600. (That one wasn't in the governor's news release.)

Aside from the governor's office giving his chart a gold star, we noticed a few other things -- like the fact that they apparently tried to fudge the visuals of the chart.

Here's the chart (click on it for the full-sized view):

In case you don't see the problem there, the governor's office is apparently still trying to pretend the government jobs gain never happened, as -16,900 and -11,100 are at nearly the same exact spot (again, click on it for the full-sized view):

Here's a more accurate view of how it would look without the pretend like the government jobs never happened angle:

Actually, it'd probably look more like this:

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