[rday]

What is very low and very high? I'm not sure my debt/income expectations match theirs so I'm not sure how to interpret this.

Was there data that I skipped over?

Edit: Yes I did miss the data:

> “somewhat high,” for example, then it means that a zip code’s average loan balance is between 25 and 35 percent higher than the national average of $24,271

[TheLogothete]

Yeah, look at that definitely balanced scale. 2 levels labeled "low" and 7 levels labeled "high". Talk about lying with statistics. Smells like a project to be used as a political lever. Shame, since it's a very good idea otherwise.

[rsfern]

I don't know. The debt level is relative to the national average, and it ranges from -100% (zero loans) to over 700%. It's not like they fabricated many 'high' levels, the distribution just has a long tail.

I think a diverging color map displaying continuous values would be more appropriate, but I'm hesitant to label it 'lying with statistics'.

[ethbro]

It does correspond with the realities of college. Remember, you're hypothetically borrowing against future earning and, for all the griping about college expense, there are a large number of fields where debt is extremely high but future earnings are also.

I'd be interested to see this broken down by major.

[pc86]

Continuing off of what rsfern said, if the actual values aren't a normal distribution it makes sense that the labels would be equally lopsided.