In class we worked in groups to do the data representation project. I think that it went well. It was a little difficult to work in groups for this, though. I'm glad I didn't have to do this activity all on my own, but it was hard to split up the tasks and to each be working on something at the same time. We ended up splitting it up so that two people were creating visuals - one ethical and one unethical - and two of us were working on writing about those visuals.

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Ethical Representation 

In our unethical portrayal of our market, we chose to use a bar graph.  This graph shows the volume of our market.  However, we want to show whether or not our market is growing.  In this documentation, the volume of our market is going up but the growth of our market is going down.  When you look at the graph, you assume that since each bar as the years go on is going up, that the market is growing.  However, this graph is done strategically.

In reading Luntz much of the material was a review for me.  I have been taught many of these rules since my first English class.  However, the three rules that jumped out at me were Rule 1: simplicity, Rule 2: use short sentences,  and rule 8: visualize.

Data Representation 

     As a group, we chose to review the book Pocket Mentor: Creating A Business Plan.  This book was written by Linda A. Cyr, a partner at Tapestry Networks, and published by the Harvard Business School Press, which contributed to the factors in our decision.  Looking through this book we felt that it was valuable because it was divided up into sections that covered each part of a business plan.  This made the read easier than a traditional text because this book contained bullet points, tips and examples.

These are three of the rules I felt I noticed most when reviewing sample business plans during our project.

Rule 7: Speak Aspirationally

After reading this article about ethics and visual rhetoric, I definitely understand that there are ethics involved with visuals we see in the media that one would not think of. For instance, 3-D bar graphs used with statistics can be used to suit whatever the person wants the public to think. For instance, say the difference between the sales of Shampoo bottles A & B are only 10,000 bottles sold: A sold 400,000 and B sold 390,000 (not a large difference).

Three Rules of Luntz

Reading the article The Ten Rules of Language by Luntz and then analyzing the business plans, showed me that most of the business plans follow the same guidelines as mentioned in the article by Luntz. The three rules that were followed by the business plans i analyzed were consistencey, visuals, and use short sentences.

Some of the necessary ethical considerations that the articles bring up is the fact that visuals such as photographs or video can be altered so well that a good observer would not be able to notice the changes. The article points out that there must be ethical guidlines for altering this visuals. Selection, Emphasis, and Framing are three main points given about the ethics of visuals. When it comes to graphs such as bar graphs, varying size among the "bars" or images representing the bars can distort the overall message of the graph.