The second finding, however, is the key weakness of a log chart: people have a hard time interpreting the scale. In the log chart, the final dot looks like it’s at around 60-70,000 deaths or so.

A log scale can thus mask changes in a curve because large differences between points are concealed within seemingly "regular" intervals. If the curve in the log graph is shown in regular linear ...

A log scale graph, where one or both axes increase exponentially (1, 10, 100, instead of 1, 2, 3), data is compressed to make exponential trends easier to parse.

There are a number of ways of plotting graphs, with the Cabinet Office Briefing Room chart using a ‘logarithmic’ scale and the worldometer a ‘linear’ scale.

For our Dow chart, we implemented a vertical timeline (transposing our log scale to the x axis), creating a chart more than 4,000 pixels high.