It helps to internalize the concept that all statistics (visualizations, but also literally any statistic with an element of organization) is narrative. “The medium is the message” type of way.
Sometimes you are choosing the narrative consciously (I created this chart to tell a story), and sometimes you are choosing it unconsciously (I just want to scatter plot and see what it shows - but you chose the x and y to plot, and you chose the scatter plot vs some other framework), and sometimes it is chosen for you (chart defaults for example, or north is up on a map).
And it’s not just charts. Statistics on the whole exist to organize raw data. The very act of introducing organization means you have a scheme, framework, lens which with to do so. You have to accept that and become conscious of that.
You cannot do anything as simple as report an average without choosing which data to include and which type of average to use. Or a histogram without choosing the bin sizes, and again, the data to include.
This is all to say nothing of the way the data was produced in the first place. (Separate topic)
Sometimes you are choosing the narrative consciously (I created this chart to tell a story), and sometimes you are choosing it unconsciously (I just want to scatter plot and see what it shows - but you chose the x and y to plot, and you chose the scatter plot vs some other framework), and sometimes it is chosen for you (chart defaults for example, or north is up on a map).
And it’s not just charts. Statistics on the whole exist to organize raw data. The very act of introducing organization means you have a scheme, framework, lens which with to do so. You have to accept that and become conscious of that.
You cannot do anything as simple as report an average without choosing which data to include and which type of average to use. Or a histogram without choosing the bin sizes, and again, the data to include.
This is all to say nothing of the way the data was produced in the first place. (Separate topic)