"High Education": How to mislead with charts

The following was the leading chart (TARSHIM 1) in a document of the Council of High Education of Israel (MALAG) (see here).

The chart suggests that the blue line has increased much more than the orange line and the gray line (which have moved in parallel).

WRONG!

Indeed:

(*) Data is shown only for 9 years, starting in 2014

To see this, we show the same data (starting from 2014) but now charted in a LOGARITHMIC scale, which shows correctly the relative changes:

The document's position is that one should extend sex segregation in high education, whose effect may be seen in the blue line, to higher degrees, because there is a lag there, as seen in the gray line. However, the reality is that the gray line has increased much more than the blue line, and did so without sex segregation.

Draw your own conclusions on whether the manipulation of data presentation in order to support one's position was done on purpose ...

One thing to note here is that the orange line, which is only a theoretical comparison line, is linear in the logarithmic scale (but not in the linear scale) -- as it should be. Thus whoever prepared this chart is aware that changes over time ("time series") are shown by ratios, that is, in the logarithmic scale.

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Here are two charts again, side by side:


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