I was asked again, so let me clarify more.

With the “smaller assignments” (reading discussions, design exercises, seek and finds, …) we’ve been having so far:

You cannot get an A on an individual assignment. Getting an A is about consistently doing well in all parts.

So far, we’ve been grading things nocheck/check/check plus (1,3,4). If you’re consistently getting 4s, that’s as well as you can do.
(The 5 is more a notation for ourselves that we want to come back to something, than a statement that its “better than a 4”)

We might change the scoring system in the future. We will probably want to have a richer rubric for larger assignments.

If you’re wondering, I am really pleased with the quality of things being submitted so far (admittedly based on sampling). The vast majority of what I’ve seen is good. I have no problem with a class where everyone does well. I have no problem giving lots of good grades.

See also: online discussions update; grading, discussions, participation, …

Link: Discussions on Canvas

When we originally designed the online discussion assignment type, there was a lot of uncertainty about how the class would be run. (both technically, and in terms of how people would respond). With 2 weeks of experience we can now be more specific and less confusing.

With the kinds of topics we’re covering in this class, discussion is important. Whether its talking about different viewpoints, or ways the ideas might be applied in practice, or critiquing designs, or even just clarifying ideas.

We will use online discussions as the primary mechanism for assignments in this class. Even for things that are primarily “handing things in”, there is value in conversation and critique beyond the initial submission.

Discussion assignments (either reading or design) will always be due the day before class. All deadlines are aligned with the “day” (so if its after midnight, it’s the next day).

So there will be two discussion assignments per week. If it’s a Monday or a Wednesday, there’s a discussion assignment initial posting due. Unless we explicitly tell you otherwise.

For discussion assignments, there is a deadline for your initial posting. Because participating in the conversation is important (and graded), we will not do evaluation for at least 1 week after the initial submission date. Effectively, the discussion is “open” for 1 week after the initial submissions for conversation where everyone has submitted their initial assignment. (of course, you can discuss before the deadline too).

So, at any given moment, you’ll have one discussion assignment that’s starting, one that you’re in the middle of discussing, and one that’s coming to an end.

Note: in addition to discussion assignments, there are also “seek and find” assignments, and 838 Bonus assignments. And there might be “non-assignment” discussions (either student initiated discussions, or non-required discussions, or …)

Grading Discussion Assignments

Discussion Assignments are graded. For this we are still working out the details – it is hard, since it is quite subjective, and we want to have enough bins to get differentiation, but not so many that the noise of subjectivity dominates. As of now, the scoring system for discussions is (sorry, we’re stuck with numbers because of Canvas):

• 0 = did not turn anything in
• 1 = minimal – not a complete assignment
• 2 = late, but otherwise good assignment (minimal late assignments get 0)
• 3 = complete
• 4 = good / great
• 5 = rare event – something notable

Note: we don’t expect that 5s are that common. For a “top grade” 4 is sufficient, a 5 is more like a 4 with a notation to ourselves that we want to remember it for some reason.

For a reading assignment…

• to get a 3, you must really answer the given questions in a way that convinces the grader that you’ve done the readings and thought about it.
• to get a 4, you must show depth of thought in your initial answer, and contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

For design assignments, we might need a different grading scale, and we might need to have separate grading for the initial posting and discussion.

Other Notes

We will divide the class into discussion groups (since having a discussion with 65 people is too hard). We will periodically shuffle the groups – not too often (since getting to know people is valuable). Canvas makes elements of this convenient, but there are issues when you are “in your group” you can’t see things outside your group.

Please be respectful of others in online discussions. There are lots of discussions of online etiquite (some nice ones are from CSU, Madison College, generic core rules, etc.) But the biggest thing: be a reasonable person and respect others. Remember that in this class, there is a wide range of students: people with different backgrounds, different levels, different abilities to write English, etc.). We reserve the right to remove inappropriate postings.

Learning Objectives

For reading assignments, the discussions are mainly to make you think about the concepts you are learning, and to build upon them by conversation with your peers.

For design discussion assignments, the goals are to give you practice at the skills of doing visualization (e.g. making designs, identifying tasks, critiquing, …) and also to re-enforce class concepts by having you reflect on others’ work and  getting feedback (and engaging in discussion) about your work

This has been superseded by a more concrete description – what’s below is still true, but more details are given in the updated posting.

Link: Discussions on Canvas

With the kinds of topics we’re covering in this class, discussion is important. Whether its talking about different viewpoints, or ways the ideas might be applied in practice, or critiquing designs, or even just clarifying ideas.

Unfortunately, with 90 people, it’s hard to have a discussion. Even an online one.

So, we are going to try an experiment: for our online discussions (and in-class ones as well), we will break the class into smaller groups. So each person will be part of a discussion in a smaller group.

We think that such discussion is implemented in Canvas, but we’re not quite sure – so early on in the class we’ll test this out. But, for the group discussions, please only post to your group.

For online discussion assignments, we will always require every person to make an initial post. Usually, we will require people to make some number of additional posts. While the assignment will specify separate deadlines for the initial post and responses, we have no way to enforce it. However, be nice to your classmates, if you don’t get your initial posting done in time, they cannot respond.

Please be respectful of others in online discussions. There are lots of discussions of online etiquite (some nice ones are from CSU, Madison College, generic core rules, etc.) But the biggest thing: be a reasonable person and respect others. Remember that in this class, there is a wide range of students: people with different backgrounds, different levels, different abilities to write English, etc.). We reserve the right to remove inappropriate postings.

There will be several different kinds of online discussions assignments.

Note: Discussion assignments are only one kind of discussion that we will have online. There will be general discussions and student initiated discussions as well. These will not be done in groups, and will not count towards grading.

Learning Objectives: will vary based on the assignment

Grading: Discussion assignments will be graded. We will evaluate your initial posting, as well as your contributions to the discussion.

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Other assignment types:

• Online Discussions
• Readings
• Seek and Find

Readings: this will be a reading heavy (by CS standards) class. The readings really are important.

All of the readings will be available online. (although some will be in the protected reader)

Some of the readings are optional. You will get more out of the class if you read more than the minimum.

Many of the readings will have associated “writing” assignments (things you do on Canvas). We will use these as a way of checking that you are doing the readings: if you don’t do the assignment, we’ll assume that you haven’t done the reading.

Some of the readings will have choices (you can read some subset of the list) – the writing will generally ask you to say which ones you’ve read.

Readings will be scheduled in two ways:

Read ahead readings: these readings will be due before a class where the material in them will be used. The deadline for them is strict (you need to read them, and do the writing as well) in advance of when you need them.

Read behind readings: these readings will take a topic discussed in class, and expand upon it. Often the deadlines for these will be to read it in time for some other activity.

Sometimes there will be online discussions associated with a reading. (see the Discussion assignment type). Sometimes, the initial posting for the discussion will be the check of the reading. Remember, when you submit to a discussion, only submit to the discussion that you are assigned to (since we need to divide the class into small enough units)

Some readings will be “838 Discussion Readings.” These are optional for 638 students. Often there will be an online discussion connected to it. Instructions on what to do with this will be given with the readings.

Some of the readings will be “838 Extra Readings.” These readings are optional, even for 838 students. However, they are only semi-optional for 838 students: over the course of the semester, you need to do “enough” of these, and participate in “enough” of the discussion of these extra topics.

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Other assignment types:

• Online Discussions
• Readings
• Seek and Find

In these assignments, you will be asked to find an example of a visualization (usually with some more specific requirements). You will need to turn in an image (e.g. a JPEG, PNG, SVG or PDF file), a web link, and some writing (answering the questions in the assignment).

Pedagogical Goal: We want you to see that the concepts we discuss in class appear “in the real world” and appreciate the context for what we’re doing. We want you to be exposed to a range of examples and to think about them. So, it will help if you choose examples from contexts that you care about (things you would read anyway). That will also help the diversity (next paragraph).

Practical Goal: We want to assemble a diverse and interesting set of examples for people to look at. With the entire class searching for examples, we’re likely to see  a wider range of things. We’ll still want to do a little curation (with so many students, we’ll likely have too many examples for everyone to look at)

Often with these assignments, we will select a few of the best examples, and use them for other things. For example, we might show them in class, or use them in a critique assignment. Therefore, it is important that you pick things that are easily available on the web, and that you provide both a link to the page where they exist (so we can see them in context) as well as an image (so we can look at it easily). Learn to use the “save image” feature in your web browser, the screen capture tool on your computer (like the PrintScreen button on Windows), and the cutout tool in acrobat.

Usually, we will not ask you to critique what you turn in. Generally, we want to curate the selections before asking you to do a critique exercise.  We’ll probably pick 10-12 of the ones turned in to have the class critique.

Also, try not to pick things from visualization papers or resources. So, for example, if you’re looking for an example of a scatterplot, don’t pick one from a paper about scatterplots, or the documentation of how to make a scatterplot in some program. Try to find one in the newspaper or a technical paper in your own field or …

This assignment is most fun (for you doing it, for us looking it over, and for the class later when we use the examples) if people try to find different examples than others (with so many people, we’re bound to get duplicates). Also, try to pick things where the topic of the visualization is interesting (at least to you), and preferably understandable to the rest of class.

Grading: Not Turned In / Late / No Check / Check / Above and Beyond

Late Policy: the late policy will usually be strict: we need to look at these to select the ones to use for the next assignment.

Mechanism: we will turn these in on Canvas. Sometimes we’ll try to turn them in as assignments, sometimes we’ll try to turn them in as assignments, some times we’ll turn them in as discussions (so you can see what everyone else did).

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Other assignment types:

• Online Discussions
• Readings
• Seek and Find

Email

In general, we will not use email as a way to do “mass distribution” of information. That is, we won’t use the class mailing list much – unless its an emergency.

Most announcements will be made using the course web page. Students are required to check this regularly, or to (optionally) sign up to receive email notifications of new content.

For the purposes of this class, we will use your @wisc.edu email address. If this isn’t something you use regularly, please try to forward it to an account you do read. Note that for other pieces of course infrastructure (like Canvas) we will use this as your account information.

Your “NETID” (that is, the thing you use for your @wisc.edu address – for me its “mlgleicher”) is the primary key we will use for our record keeping. We will ask you to use this on things you turn in.

Yes, the course staff (professor and TA) violate this rule: I use my gleicher@cs.wisc.edu email account for everything, and often forget to check my @wisc.edu address. Students don’t get this option, sorry.

Email is the best way to contact the course staff. If you send email from an account other than your @wisc.edu account, please include your NETID in corrspondence. Also, please make sure your name comes in the “From” field.

Class Web

The primary mechanism for providing information about the class is the course web.

Students are responsible for the material that is on the web, especially the announcements (on the “News” topic/thread). Students must either check the page regularly, sign up for email notifications of new content, or subscribe to the RSS feed to be alerted to new content.

At first, a lot of stuff will be put all over the web page. Once things get running smoothly, important stuff will generally go onto the “news” page (which is a feed of news articles) which will then link to longer posts elsewhere.

There will also be a weekly “The Week in 638/838” posting to remind you of important stuff.

Remember: you are responsible for keeping up on announcements to the web page. “I didn’t see the assignment posted” is not a valid excuse.

Class Calendar

There is a class calendar that is available as a Google Calendar. This is largely redundant with the course web.

Canvas

We will use a course management system called Canvas. We need to add people to the system manually, so if you are not able to log in and see the course, please let the instructor and TA know.

We will not use Canvas for announcements. It does not replace the course web.

We will not use Canvas for computing final grades. The numerical grades in Canvas are just codes to match our non-numerical scales (e.g. check/no-check will be given numbers 0-5). We will not just average these scores.

The course staff is still learning how to use Canvas, so the details of how we will use it will evolve over time.

Readings

There are two textbooks for this class. I will refer to them by the author’s last name: Munzner and Ware. Both of these are available online via the library.

All of the readings (including the textbooks) will be available to students in the class on the web. However, much of the reading are made available is subject to licenses or academic fair use principles. Therefore, we need to limit access to the reader. We will provide three mechanisms:

There will be a “box.com” folder (this is the official university mechanism for file sharing). We will set this up so that students can view the folder using their wisc.edu credentials. If you are unable to access the Box folder, contact the TA.

There is a password protected space on the CS web server. Accessing this requires having a CS account. Everyone in this class will get one, but if this is your only CS class, you may find you don’t need to go through the effort to activate the account. You don’t need to use this one: everything will be available by Box.

Some of the material is available from the class’ library course page. Not everything is there. We intend to mirror the libraries content in Box and on the CS web page.

Note: the things in the protected course reader are for use by students in the class only. Do not share them with people outside the class.

Attending is an important part of this class. We will have many in-class activities. And I do believe that you will get something out of lectures.

The assignments are an important part of class. Even the small things we ask you to do, we do them for a reason.

Of course, we know that people will miss class, or miss an assignment. You’ll get sick, or have a job interview, or need to go to a conference and miss class once or twice. Or maybe you’ll have a “less good” excuse (your alarm clock broke, or the bus was late). We may not be able to re-create in class experiences, so if you miss them, you miss them.We will provide some leniency – just don’t miss too much.

Having 100% attendance requires luck (e.g. not getting sick) and lack of luck (e.g. not getting job interviews or ski vacations). Missing 20% of the in class activities is probably a sign that you didn’t prioritize this class well enough.

We will not grade traditional “participation” – with 90 people, its too hard for us to learn everyone’s name, keep track of who talks in class, … In fact, there isn’t even time for everyone to talk in class! You participate by doing the in class activities (and the out of class activities that depend on the in-class activities).

We’ll assess in-class performance by sampling. We won’t take attendance everyday, or do an activity that gets scored every day. But, we will have enough that the statistics of the sampled days will model the greater population. (for those of you non-statisticians, that means that if you miss 75% of the days we check, then we’ll assume that you’ve missed 75% of all the days).

If you miss class (and/or an in-class assignment) you cannot make it up. Also, it is hard for us to decide what is a “legitimate” excuse (you were in the hospital) and a non-legitimate one (“I went to a party the night before and didn’t wake up this morning”) – because rarely are things so clear. If you want to tell us why you missed something, send email to the TA (not the professor) who will record it. We will look at this at the end. Remember, if you miss a small number of things, it’s OK.  If you chronically miss things, then there might be an issue – and even if you have “an excuse,” you’ll have missed out on the experience.

Late Policy

Things will have deadlines for a reason. Usually, we want you to do one thing, because its necessary for doing the next. Sometimes, we don’t want the previous thing to drag on (so you can move on to the next). And sometimes, its a practical concern (we need to do grading). The “firmness” of the deadlines will depend on the reason for it, and will be stated with the assignment.

For “practical” deadlines, the deadline is totally firm: there is no chance to make up the work after the fact. For example, if you miss an in-class assignment there’s no way to make it up, and if an assignment was to provide material for an in-class discussion, there’s no reason to turn it in after that discussion. We understand that people will miss things (see the discussion on attendance, assignments are treated the same way – we won’t expect 100%).

For many other deadlines, we can be more lenient. Late assignments will be penalized, but turning things in late is better than nothing. For some deadlines, if you miss them, we won’t be able to grade your assignment (especially if there is peer review involved). They will be recorded as “turned in late”.

We will not precisely quantify the penalties for late assignments and projects. If you’re really concerned about your grade, turn in good work on time. Generally, we like the idea of giving you more time so you can do better and cooler stuff. But there are practical concerns both in terms of you needing to move on to the next thing, us being able to do the grading, and having fairness in the class.

This is some background on why I am making the course the way it is. It hopefully explains why the policies are the way they are, and gives you a sense of “the spirit of the law.”

My goal in this class is to provide you with a set of experiences that will help you develop you understanding of, and abilities in, Data Visualization (and related broader context – like being a good scientist).

My goal is: Everything I ask you to do is because I believe that the experience of doing it will benefit you (and be worth the effort you to put in).

Ideally, there is no “busywork” – everything you do is because I believe that you (or at least the majority of students) will get something out of the experience. For all activities, I will try to help you understand why you are doing it (stating the objectices) – although sometimes I may not have the time to state them, and sometimes, telling you the outcome ahead of time might change how you view the assignment.

Over the semester, I may need to make some concessions to the “no-busywork” goal, as we have other constraints.

• We need to do things to make sure the class runs smoothly.
• We need to do things to make the class practical.
• We need to be able to assess that you did learn enough (to give you credit) and how well/much you learned (to give you a grade). The need to certify/assess is a bit of a pain, but its part of the University’s job.
• I am experimenting with what activities will actually create these learning experiences.

These things aren’t necessarily contrary to the primary goal (the student’s learning). For example, if the class doesn’t run smoothly, it will be harder for you to have the experiences that you will learn from. Or, an experimental in-class design exercise might teach you a ton, or turn out to flop (we need to take those risks).

In a smaller class, fewer concessions to the experiential goals need to be made: we can have discussions, and the course staff can get to know everyone well enough that we can do fair evaluation subjectively. I’ve run lots of successful smaller classes.

This semester, we can’t do that. We can’t have discussions with 90 people. (if everyone had 1 minute, we wouldn’t fit in a class period). And I am trying to experiment with how I can create the same experiences we provide in the smaller class to a bigger class. Bear with me as I experiment. Some of this involves using technology which has a learning curve for both of us, and will require you to do many things “online” (typing them in rather than just talking about them).

Also, I am questioning the effectiveness of the traditional “monologue lecture” class style. I believe that people can get a lot out of watching me lecture for 75 minutes. But I am not sure this is the most effective use of student time.

So, that’s a long winded way of saying…

1. The activities in this class really are meant to give you the right learning experiences.
2. I really am trying to minimize the busywork, so we can do #1
3. Please be patient with the experiments (especially the technology)
4. Yes, some of the technology will make extra work for you – but hopefully it will pay off by making things run more smoothly
5. Yes, I really think you should do all of the class activities.

Grading, Evaluation

Having to assign grades is one of the least enjoyable parts of teaching for me. I would like to educate students – not judge or certify or assess.

My goal is to assess your command of the material. I will try very hard not to assess your unrelated skills (for example, your artistic skill). Unfortunately, directly measuring your command of the material is hard.

For many (most?) class activities, it is difficult to assess how well you did it. So we will mainly keep track of “did you do it”. (e.g. most things will be more or less graded “check/no check”). This isn’t just a case of the famous adage “80% of success is showing up” (see http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/10/showing-up/ for a discussion of where it came from). The logic is that we think these activities are important enough that just by doing them, you can’t help but get something out of them.

This means you really do need to do all the assignments and in-class activities because we’re counting! And it means you’ll need to bear with the technology we use to keep track of these things.

This means you need to show up to class! Because if you don’t, you’ll miss out on in-class activities. And you can’t make some things up – if you miss a class experience/activity, you’ve missed it.

I always thought a “syllabus” was a description of the topics covered in class.

But, it is actually a more general discussion of official information about the class. (see https://kb.wisc.edu/vesta/page.php?id=43346 for the university’s definition).

This brief syllabus has the basic info. Really the course web is the syllabus, and most topics here are discussed in more detail somewhere (links provided from this document – although this document is written first, so that the links may appear later). In general, you should look at the “Course Policies” topic (which has lots of articles), the individual postings about readings, and the “Class Schedule.”

Basic Info:

Course Name and Number:

CS638: Data Visualization
CS838: Data Visualization

There are, technically two separate classes that meet together and have overlapping assignments, readings, and activities. Grading will be done separately for each class. Unless otherwise specified, all information applies to both classes.

The course numbers (638, 838) are the “Topics in Computing” – the generic numbers we use for new classes that haven’t gotten their own numbers yet.

Instructional Staff:

Instructor:
Michael Gleicher, Professor, Computer Sciences
Office: 6385 Computer Sciences
Office Hour: Tuesday 2-2:45, Wednesday 11-11:45, or by appointment
Preferred contact is by email: gleicher[at]cs.wisc.edu

TA:
Alper Sarikaya, Graduate Student, Computer Sciences
Lab: 1347 Computer Sciences (Graphics Lab)
Office Hour: Monday 11a-12p, Thursday 1p-2p, or by appointment
Preferred contact is by email: sarikaya[at]cs.wisc.edu

Class Meetings:

Tuesday and Thursdays, 11:00 am–12:15 pm
Room 1221, Computer Sciences

Note: this room has tight aisles, and we will be filling most chairs. If you come late, you will be climbing over other students to get to a chair. So please come on time!

Also note: students are required to come to class.

Exam Period:

Monday, May 11, 2015, 5:05 pm–7:05 pm.
We probably won’t have a final exam, but I reserve the right to schedule something in that timeslot.

Main Topics: (see the detailed schedule for more information)

• Motivations for visualization and the types of visualization
• Data and Task Abstractions
• Evaluation, Validation, and Design Process
• Human Perception, and its impact on Design
• Encodings and Layout
• Graphs, Networks, and Multi-Variate Data
• Clutter and Dimensionality Reduction
• Experiments and statistics (for visualization, and visualization for)
• Animation and Motion
• Scientific Visualization
• Depicting 3D

Learning Outcomes:

• Students will understand the potential of effective data visualization.
• Students will understand the key principles for the design of effective visualizations.
• Students will be able to design and evaluate data visualizations for a variety of tasks.
• Students will understand the relevant basics of visual perception and its role in designing.
• Students will understand some standard visualization methods and their applicability.
• (838 only) Students will gain exposure and practice with some of the skills required to be a researcher and practitioner inthe field of Visualization.

Things that we will not do (Non- Learning Outcomes):

We will not teach students about implementation of visualization systems.
We will not teach students to use specific visualization systems.

Text and Readings (summary, see the other postings)

There are two textbooks: Munzner’s Visualization Design and Analysis and Ware’s Visual Thinking for Design. Both are available online via the library.

There will be many other readings distributed via the web. There will be a combination of book chapters (provided under terms of academic fair use), research articles, and web pages.

How Students will be evaluated (class activities – see specific postings about types)

• Participation / In-Class Activities: We will not grade participation in the usual sense (speaking and interacting in class). Participation will be assessed via in-class activities.
• Reading: There will be a substantial amount of reading for this class. Most readings will have small online assignments that will give you a chance to demonstrate that you have done the readings and learned something from them.
• Online Discussion: There will be assignments where your job is to participate in an online discussion. Generally, we will break the class into small groups and each group will have a separate discussion.
• Seek and Find: You will be asked to find an example of a visualization (generally on the web) that satisfied some criteria, and to answer a question or two about it. Generally, the critiques will happen seperately.
• Design / Re-Design Challenges: You will be asked to make a visualization that solve a problem: either from scratch, or based or to improve an existing visualization.
• Peer Evaluation: (838 only) students will be required to evaluate their peers (and assessed on their ability to do so).
• Summative Assessments: I do not plan on having a traditional exam in this class (but I reserve the right to have a take home final). However, we will have an activity that requires you to review what you’ve learned. (the benefit of an exam is that it forces you to review and internalize the material – but hopefully, we can find less painful ways to make that happen).

All activities will be considered in determining the final class grade.

Grading:

The two sections (638/838) are graded independently.

Grading Standards:

Students who successfully complete most assignments will earn a B. Earning a better grade will requiring doing better than just “succeeding” at the assignments.

We will use a curve at the end of the class. If fewer than 10% of the class does not meet our absolute standard, we will shift grades accordingly. Of course, more than 10% of a class can earn As. If too few people earn As, its the staffs mistake (we didn’t teach well enough). If the entire class earns As, we have an exceptional class (don’t laugh – it has happened!).

Course Infrastructure (summary – see infrastructure posting)

We will use email to the students @wisc.edu email address for individual communications.

We will use the university provided class mailing list (to students’ @wisc.edu mailing lists) for announcements. However, the class web will be the primary mechanism for announcements.

The class web will be the primary source of information on the class, and students are required for its content. The website provides a facility to send email notifications of new information. You must sign up for this if you prefer this mechanism.

We will use Canvas as the course management system. Students will be required to submit assignments there, as well as to participate in online discussions.

We will provide readings online through a protected reader (web access only to students in the class) to comply with academic fair use standards.

Course Policies (summary – see postings):

• Class attendance is required, in-class assignments cannot be made up. There is some leniency.
• Late assignment policy will be specified for each assignment.
• You are required to be aware of content on the web site.

Software and Computing:

Students will be expected to be able to use basic computing software (a spreadsheet, a presentation preparation program, …). Using more advanced tools (for software development, data analysis, statstical analysis, etc.) is optional.

For students interested, Tableau has made their software available to the class through the Tableau for Teaching program. Tableau’s data visualization software is provided through the Tableau for Teaching program. Use of this software is optional.

You can use computers in the CS computing labs if you need to. Contact course staff to make arrangements. It’s probably best if you use your own computer (if you have one), or at least one you have more convenient access to.