Visualization Snacks is my attempt to provide Visualization Knowledge in small, easily accessible pieces.
Warning: This is a pre-release version of the site. I am just putting up the shell with a few postings for my class.
Many people want help with Visualization, but don’t have the opportunity to take a class, or do extensive reading, or search through the endless resources. Many of the resources out there only work in the context of a larger chunk.
What I’ve found is the pieces I’ve created for the class I teach (CS765 Course Web) are not necessarily appropriate for anything other than the students in the class. Visualization Snacks is an attempt to put that kind of content into a form that may be more usable to others.
What you’ll find (the sections of the site)…
Snacks - these are the core “lessons” written explicitly for this site. The idea is to have a form that allows for quick consumption. The goal is to provide the main idea quickly, but then to provide the background afterwards. The why follows the what.
Tutorials - these are written “documents” that were originally created for my class, or that don’t have the stylized form of the Snacks. They tend to be longer.
Critiques - are examinations of specific visualizations. The idea of a critique is to examine something closely to learn from it (not just to criticize).
Papers - are my summaries/discussions of papers (or other documents). The idea is that I read them, so you don’t have to. In some cases, it’s an opportunity for me to give you the short, informal version of something else I’ve written.
Resources - descriptions of books and other things that might be helpful.
Students often ask for resources on Graphic Design. I’ll suggest two books that have been readings in class in the past (and might be this year if we do the Graphic Design module): “The Non-Designer’s Design Book” and “Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty.”
Read more…I will use a simple example (a data table) to show how the basic concepts of visualization can be applied. This is mainly to illustrate the “4 design moves” introduced in Tutorial 1: What Is Visualization and How do We Do It?
Read more…This gives you a sense of my thoughts on what Visualization is, and how we best go about creating them. By defining visualization in a clear and operational manner, we can better organize our thinking about what it means to do visualization well (which is our goal), how we should go about doing it, and what we need to learn to do it.
Read more…