Assignment 2: Who are you?

This assignment is due before Tuesday, January 26th. (we’ll check sometime Tuesday morning before class, and read them to help organize discussion on that day).

The purpose of this assignment is to 1) introduce ourselves to each other and 2) test out some of the mechanics for the class.

Knowing about the people in the class (this isn’t just the instructor knowing, but knowing each other) is particularly important for this class since we want to use the diversity of the backgrounds in the class to our advantage – we all come with different perspectives, problems to solve, and ideas.

So, please make a posting to this web (using the “new post” feature) in the “Student Posts” category with your name as the title. Add “Biography” as a tag. (the use of tags as a way of organizing assignment handins is an experiment here). In the post please:

1. Say a bit about yourself. At the least, what department you are in, where you are in your career (e.g. 3rd year grad student or dissertator), what kinds of things you do for your “main work” (or if you’re a new student, what your interests are).
2. Say a bit about your interest in visualization. Describe where you see yourself in terms of the “3 perspectives” we discussed in class (Domain Scientist, Designer, Vis Scientist). Do you have any thoughts as to what you expect to get out of the class?
3. Say a little bit about your skill set. What are your programming and design skills? (this will be useful in trying to help adjust assignments and projects to fit people’s abilities).
4. Optionally, add a picture (I think you should be able to), and a link to your personal web page.

You can say more if you like.

Notes:

1. If you don’t want your post to be public (that is, that the whole world can read it), you can make it readable by subscribers only. I’m pretty sure we can do this, but since I’m new to workpress, this is something I’ll have to work out.
2. You should have registered for the web site for assignment 1, and the TA should have promoted your account to “Contributor” so that you can make posts. If you can’t make posts, contact the TA.
3. As a contributor, you can create a posting, but the TA or instructor (the moderators) must approve it before it gets posted. We’ll try to check to make sure its tagged and categoried correctly, but try to get that correct.