Visualizations

Course Overview

Math/CS 484 -- The goal of our Ford/Knight project is to distill and organize the principles of visualizing large data sets. Modern science is often done by small groups of people that come from diverse backgrounds, e.g. a mathematician, a biologist, and a computer scientist. We plan to solicit input in the form of example data sets to work with from each of the natural and social science departments on campus. This work will provide a foundation for a course, or course module, which we hope to offer in the future. Must see instructor for registration.

Assignments

• Student Solutions

Plan for First Visualization

The write-up of the plan for your first visualization project is due in class on Tuesday 25 September. This should include:

• The question you are going to answer or story you are going to tell
• The data sets you will use (including URLs if available)
• Any numerical summaries you will produce
• A hand drawn draft of the visualization

To prepare for this you should read/watch the following items before you design your visualization or write-up your plan.

• David McCandless:
  • The beauty of data visualizations (TED) - http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization.html
  • Military spending - http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/01/information-is-beautiful-military-spending
• Chapters 1 and 2 in Designing Data Visualizations (on reserve in the science library)
• Chapters 1 and 2 in Visualize This (on reserve in the science library)

Second Critique Tour

• For this critique tour we will use IBM's Many Eyes project, http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/ Before you start spend a minute looking around the site and explore the data sets, tools, etc. that are available.
• Browse the visualizations focusing on ones based on scientific data/questions, http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations?sort=rating
• Identify three (or more) visualizations that share a theme, question, or underlying data set(s). Use the evolving guidelines, Evaluating Infographics to produce a critique of each of the visualizations that you choose. Write-up each of those critiques.
• Due in class on Thursday 20 September.

First Critique Tour

This assignment is to be done in-class on Tuesday 11 September, 2012. In pairs review/critique one of these infographics from http://visual.ly/

1. Human Languages on the Internet - Ivan, Mikel
2. The Internet in 2015 - Leif, Dee
3. Worldwide Internet Usage - Elena, Emily
4. Technology and eCommerce - Tristan, Alex
5. Responsive Web Design - Mobeen, Ryan

Each group should:

• Evaluate the infographic using the criteria listed below.
• Locate a second infographic, on Visual.ly or elsewhere, that covers roughly the same ground and evaluate it similarly.
• Prepare and deliver a 4 minute presentation which summarizes your findings during the last portion of class this morning.

Consider the guidelines we are developing, Evaluating Infographics, as you examine the infographics.

First Workshop - Histograms

This assignment is designed to consolidate your knowledge with histograms and give you experience generating one with a modest data set. You must do the work by hand, you can optionally use a software tool to produce it as well. Make sure you document each step of your work. This workshop is due Thursday 13 September.

First Lab - Measuring the Real World

Measuring the real world, the PDF. This lab is due Sunday 9 September at 3p US-ET. Turn in a (BW) printout of your writeup and visualization, along with the URL of the on-line (color) version of the visualization if it is available. Put the paper copy in Charlie's Box A in the wooden tower in the Math/CS/Physics lounge on the West end of second floor of Dennis Hall at Earlham College in Richmond, IN, US (planet Earth).

First Reading and Tips and Techniques Tour

Listed below are the assignments for each chunk, note that everyone should read the startup materials.

• Startup - Everyone
• Web site - Leif
• Making presentations - Mikel
• News graphics - Ivan
• Financial Data - Elena
• Decision making - Emily
• Narrative - Dee
• Aesthetics - Tristan
• Graphic design - Alex
• Scientific and engineering - Mobeen
• Animations - Ryan

As you read your chunks look for bits of guidance, advice, technique, etc. that you feel are useful. Summarize each of these in our Tips and Techniques Google Doc, make sure each entry contains an appropriate citation and follows the pattern/example at the top of the document. This tour is due Sunday 2 September.

Resources

Visualization Galleries (some with embedded tools, e.g. Many Eyes and Gapminder)

• Visually - http://visual.ly/
• IBM's Many Eyes - http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/
• R Gallery - http://gallery.r-enthusiasts.com/
• Hans Rosling's Gapminder - http://www.gapminder.org/

Data Sets

• Amazon - http://aws.amazon.com/datasets
• Google - http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
• US Census - http://www.census.gov/main/www/access.html
• Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/
• US Government public data - http://www.data.gov/
• UK Government public data - http://data.gov.uk/
• IBM's Many Eyes - http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/

Advice and Technique

• Visual Strategies (book website) and the review of it from the NY Times Science section.

Course Specific

• Feedback Legend

Bread Crumbs

• Thursday 23 August
  1. Anscombe's data sets - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe's_quartet

• Sunday 26 August (retrieve notes from board pictures)
  1. Relative error, absolute error, systematic error, and related topics
  2. Standard deviation
  3. Precision and accuracy

• Thursday 30 August (harvest from Mic)

• Tuesday 4 September (harvest notes from board picture)
  1. Histograms

• Thursday 6 September
  1. Answered questions about first lab.
  2. Demonstrated how to upload files to the wiki, used for lab reports in PDF form.

• Tuesday 11 September
  1. Discussion about when to aggregate, how many readings to take and related issues
  2. First critique tour (in-class)

• Thursday 13 September
  1. Last of the first critique tour presentations
  2. Discuss next critique tour

• Tuesday 18 September
  1. Radiolab - Cities episode
  2. Hans Rosling Videos
     1. TED Talks: Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your worldview
     2. Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats

Notes

Mic and Charlie's notes