Fig. 7.

Gradient plots of our results of our textual one sample judgments experiment §4.3). When asked to consider potential outcomes, the expected behavior is that viewers will “trust” the sample mean – if a potential outcome is higher than the sample mean, then the “real” outcome will likely by lower than the potential outcome. Participants largely adhered to this strategy throughout experiments. While moving information from the graph to the text does mitigate within the bar bias, it significantly affects alignment with expected strategy. Since viewers must mentally project the potential outcomes and margins of error to the graph space, the relationship between the potential outcome and the sample mean becomes more difficult to analyze.