alt Hacker News> So we can say the same about the authors "AA’s plot is misleading" claim, he is "not schooled in reading graphs"?
Oh absolutely - as other commenters have pointed out.
> When building a chart is good practice to provide log scale switch and zoom&pan capabilities, so the reader can decide how to look at it.
For the majority of the time charts have existed, your "good practice" would have been impossible. Charts have historically been static images (e.g. published in a journal). So there have been conventions on how to depict them - and at times it is very appropriate to start from something other than 0.
Here's an article from the UK's Office For National Statistics:
https://digitalblog.ons.gov.uk/2016/06/27/does-the-axis-have...
I agree on the past, when you have limited resource and have to print something on paper that you cannot recall to fix you have to carefully choose the layout.
But that era is gone since decades, nowadays, given how easy it is, it's a shame to not provide log scale switch and zoom&pan capabilities.