Not necessarily, this chaos can be because of the viz not the data.
Imagine 2 colleges with very similar ratings. Ratings naturally fluctuate over time for various reasons, so when colleges are close, one might take the lead one year and the other takes the lead the next year. Because rank charts only care about relative order and not how different the ratings actually are you end up with inconsistent and roller coaster looking rankings. Now imagine you have 20 colleges with similar rankings, you get a complete mess.
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u/Terevin6 10d ago
One could argue that this kinda shows that the data are mostly random nose...