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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference between showing why something is "never neutral" vs merely "not always neutral".

One example would be sufficient to establish that it is "not always neutral", but I think no example can establish that data visualisation is never neutral.

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It's not even sufficient to show that maps are never neutral.

As far as neutrality is concerned, I'd like to see someone argue that a graph of sin(x) with x between 0 and 2pi and y between say -1.5 and +1.5 is not neutral, provided it is presented as a graphical approximation of the function and domain.

For other numerical graphs, such as stock prices, or population development, there's always the possibility that it isn't represented in sufficient detail, but that would depend on the user's knowledge and expectation, I think. How to lie with statistics is a good starting point for that. The article suggests the same idea, but makes it a social issue.

Easy. You’ve already bought into the cultural assumption that this equation will be graphed on a Cartesian plane. Using polar coordinates instead, with an angle of x and a radius of y (a perfectly valid interpretation, even if it’s not what you envisioned), gives us a circle. These outputs have their own cultural associations: the former, music (particularly synthesizers); the latter, radar or sonar indicators. Showing the radius enhances the effect. All else being equal, if a new unexplained technology is said to produce that output, a clever data visualizer can bias the viewer towards viewing it as militant or peaceful. This is strictly a modern cultural bias; a hundred years ago, viewers would not have made either of those connections.

By limiting the graph to [0, 2pi] and presenting it as a graphical approximation of the function and domain, you've obscured the fact that the function is periodic. Visualizing the interval [-3pi, 3pi] would make it more obvious that the function is periodic.

Domain and function were given.

> you've obscured the fact that the function is periodic

No. Periodicity is not a property in a graph. The graph still shows the function in that domain neutrally, as far as I can tell. Neutral meaning: impartial, without strongly marked characteristics.

If you insist on periodicity: there's an infinite (uncountable) number of properties not shown. If that violates neutrality, every statement is biased, which makes the article's statement rather trivial.

The point of data visualization is to communicate through graphical representation of information.

If you have to specify everything in text and you don't intend to actually communicate anything through graphics and if you only focus on pure, sterile mathematical functions which don't have an ideological component that could be biased to begin with... then surely you can see that your statement is the trivial one.

> The graph still shows the function in that domain neutrally

The key word being "in that domain". You can use the same excuse every time you mislead people with statistics. The fact that your choices can mislead people proves that they're not neutral.

Depending on the color choices, it may be more difficult for colorblind folks. Choosing to print or display it is a choice that affects the blind.

That doesn't change the neutrality of the graph itself, does it?

The idea of a 'graph in itself' is nonsense. Graphs are viewed by people and the functional relationship of a graph and its viewers is conditioned on choices the graph's author makes.

Assigning neutrality or bias without viewer of interaction is a category error. It is not an intrinsic property of the graph despite our wanting to simplify the world this way. It's like saying chocolate is intrinsically the best candy when what's being said is 'my relationship to chocolate is that it's my favorite.'

That the graph exists at all is a non-neutral statement about that graph versus all other possible graphs that could have been drawn and were not.

You can only claim that if you think nothing can every be neutral, which makes the discussion rather moot.

Your wording is so ambiguous that it's impossible to determine which of two opposite claims you are making.

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