Due Date: Initial Posting Due Monday 3/27, Required Postings Due Friday 3/31, Discussion closes 4/7.
Handin: this will be a discussion on Canvas (link)
Reading: see Reading 10 (Part 1 due 3/27)
3/25 update: because the coming weeks will have design challenges (in fact for this week both the end of Design Challenge 1 and the beginning of Design Challenge 2) are going on, I realize I should adjust the expectations for readings and discussions a bit. Also, based on feedback, I will stop splitting readings and discussion assignment postings after this.
New requirements: required questions can be answered from class / the first part of the reading in light of the reduced second part. Discussion is recommended (we are counting!), but forcing people to discuss seems to be disliked. If you have something to say, please say it. We do consider discussion in grading, but you can decide how much discussing to do.
Graphs are a big topic that we won’t spend enough time on. But hopefully, from the readings, lecture, and assignments you’ll get some appreciation for why they are a big deal.
For this discussion, you are required to make 3 “initial” postings, and (at least) 2 postings in response to others (so a minimum of 5 postings to the discussion). (optionally, but recommended – especially if you want to really learn the material) have some discussion. This is a good opportunity for the more CS-oriented students to explain to the less CS-oriented students some of the technical stuff in those algorithms papers.
The required questions:
- (respond to this first, by Monday 3/27) Why is visualizing graphs/networks different from “normal” data, and what are the specific challenges that come up?
- When you look at the treevis.net website, you can see a lot of different ways to represent a tree (which is a special kind of graph). Pick one that you found surprising/weird (at least from the picture, you don’t need to read the paper). What do you think is good/bad about it? Why did you think the author made it?
- (this is best done after the class exercise on Wednesday, and connects to part 2 of the reading) What might you consider in laying out a node-link diagram? What kinds of challenges come up? What does it mean to do it well?