Do graphs have to start from zero origin? NO, read why.

Dear children of God,

Finally, I found the graph I was referring to in class. The graph above was made by a scientist from NASA for the purpose of illustrating the amount of carbon dioxide over passing of time until today. As you can see it does not start from zero either along x or y axis. If one has to stick to mathematical rule of starting from zero when making graphs then can you just imagine how much space would be wasted and how small the lines would be? That is simply for the y-axis. If the value of x-axis in years should start from zero then we cannot make an interpretation on how carbon dioxide increases or decreases over time. Note that the rightmost end of the x-axis (lower right corner) ends with zero.

Graphing is a math skill yet Math has its way of doing things contrary to science. In science, we have to find meaning on what we do. We cannot just blindly follow the rules and end up with a nonsense graph. That is why there is so much more to the number and we have to assign meaning to it. I have nothing against Math but the discipline ends with a number. Science strives to continue from the calculation of the number by attaching meaning to it.

siraris