Graph perception involves the accurate decipherment of (often quantitative) data displayed in visual form. Because graph style may reflect discipline-specific tradition, similar graph styles in distinct disciplines can be subject to misinterpretation. Both archaeologist James A. Ford and paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould confused spindle diagrams representing archaeological frequency seriation and paleontological clade diversity analysis as displaying the same kinds of data and representing the same processes. Similarities between the two kinds of analysis are, however, limited to the use of the same graph style-spindle diagrams-to illustrate the history of frequencies of things. The kinds of frequencies differ in two ways between the two disciplines; frequencies are of low-level Linnaean taxa within a clade representing a higher taxon in paleobiology, and are frequencies of artifact specimens within each of several types in archaeology. Further, frequencies are absolute in clade diversity and relative in frequency seriation. Clade diversity analysis, as practiced by Gould and colleagues, is a time-series analysis that requires knowing the age of taxa prior to analysis of the shape of the spindle diagram. Frequency seriation in archaeology involves ordering multiple collections of artifacts that share at least some types; ordering is based on similar frequencies and a presumed unimodal frequency distribution, and the order is inferred to be a chronology. Different analytical assumptions and goals result in discipline specific rules of graph decipherment, though each of the two kinds of analyses can be performed in each of the two disciplines.

中文翻译：

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误解图：生物进化多样性图和考古频率锯齿图的混淆。

图形感知涉及对以视觉形式显示的（通常是定量的）数据的准确解密。由于图形样式可能反映特定学科的传统，因此不同学科中的相似图形样式可能会产生误解。考古学家James A. Ford和古生物学家Stephen Jay Gould都混淆了表示考古频率序列化和古生物学进化枝多样性分析的纺锤形图，因为它们显示了相同种类的数据和相同的过程。但是，两种分析之间的相似性仅限于使用相同的图形样式-主轴图-来说明事物发生频率的历史。频率的种类在两个学科之间以两种方式不同。频率是进化枝中代表高级生物分类的进化枝中低级林纳类群的频率，是考古学中几种类型中每种类型的人工标本的频率。此外，频率在进化枝多样性方面是绝对的，而在频率锯齿方面是相对的。正如Gould及其同事所实践的，进化枝多样性分析是一种时序分析，需要在分析纺锤形图的形状之前了解分类单元的年龄。考古学中的频率序列化涉及对至少共享某些类型的人工制品进行排序。排序基于相似的频率和假定的单峰频率分布，并且该顺序被推论为年代顺序。不同的分析假设和目标会导致特定学科的图形破译规则，