The Week in Vis 14 (Mon, Dec 3 – Fri, Dec 7): Presentations and Animation

by Mike Gleicher on December 1, 2018

Class Meetings
  • Mon, Dec 3 – Lecture/ICE:Route Maps, Special Graphs
  • Wed, Dec 5 – Lecture:Presentation and Anaimation
  • Fri, Dec 7 – No class, but extra office hour 11-noon
Week Deadlines

Last week we talked about graphs. We didn’t get through everything. I’ll mention some things we didn’t get to at the beginning on Monday, and then we’ll do a design exercise.

The readings for this week are about animations and presentations.

“How to give presentations” is an obviously important topic. There’s a huge irony in talking about how to give a talk. Especially since it makes me realize that in class I often don’t follow my own advice. Read through my notes (see readings below). Watch a Hans Rosling video (see Video Presentations below – but remember, you are not Hans Rosling). Maybe we’ll talk about it an class a bit.

Animation is an interesting topic (and in some ways, how I got started doing Vis). I am not sure how much to say about it.

On Wednesday, we’ll do something in class that connects to these two topics. I haven’t decided what yet. It might be me talking about another topic…

You may want to look at this week’s learning goals Learning Goals 14: Week 14 – Presentation and Animation.

Readings (due Mon, Dec 3 – preferably before class)

Two topics this week, neither with much reading. You need to read a blog posting I made years ago, and watch a few videos.

I’m not sure how much of my rant on presentations I’ll give in class this year. But helping you think about presentations is something I like to do in this class (and all grad classes).

Before reading my notes, here are some caveats (note: this is taken from the 2012 class):

  • The goals and standard for presentation really vary across venue/discipline. What we value in computer science (in particular the areas I work in) are quite different than in other disciplines. It’s hard for me to discuss this without value judgement (since I am bred to believe in the “CS way”), but I also plead ignorance to the practices in other area. I’d like to use this as a chance to learn about others.
  • I don’t consider myself to be a great presenter. Do as I say, not as I do. The upside of this, is that it means I think about how to be better at it.
  • A lecture is not the same as a talk, so what you see in class is quite different than what you would see in one of my talks.
  • Even within a particular style/venue/type of talk, there is a wide range of opinions on what is good talk, what the goals should be, …
  • The “right answer” depends not only on the situation, but on the person. But that will be one of the biggest lessons I hope you get. I may not speak to your specific case, but hopefully, you can see how the general lessons apply.
  • As you might guess, I have strong opinions. But you don’t have to guess at what they are, since I’ve written them down.

Given that…

My real goal is to get you to think about what might make for a good presentation, and to form your own strong opinions – even if they are different than mine.

Given that, read my posting about presentations. Yes, it’s from a 2011 class – but I think if I were updating it, it wouldn’t be much different.

Video Presentations

Hans Rosling is a famous presenter – talking about social issues around the world in venues like TED, etc. He was famous for presenting data in a compelling way to make his points for a broad audience. Sadly, he died this year. But his influence is significant (both on presentating data and on the world in general).

If you haven’t seen a Rosling talk, you need to experience one. If you have seen one, you probably won’t mind watching another.

There are lots of videos of rosling presentations – here’s one I have handy, or here’s another one.

The actual point of Rosling is not his visualizations (he does use standard visualization effectively – often with animation), but rather as a way to talk about presentations.

Animation

Rather than read about animation, I’ll let you watch a (reasonably old video) about it’s role in visualization.

I’ll kill two birds with one stone here: I want you to think about the role of animations in visualization, and how to present research results in video form. So, I’ll have you watch a research video about animation in visualization!

You don’t have to read the paper, but you do have to watch the video:

  • Heer, Jeffrey, and George Robertson. “Animated Transitions in Statistical Data Graphics.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 13, no. 6 (January 2007): 1240–47. doi:10.1109/TVCG.2007.70539. (web page with video)

Some of the ideas in the video have been questioned in perceptual studies, but I think the basic concepts are still worthwhile.

Animation (optional)

The classic reference for the Principles of Animation is “The Illusion of Life” – a book about the history of Disney animation. It’s a coffee table art book – not necessarily something meant for either animators or computer scientists to learn from. But it is fabulous, and full of great examples from classic Disney films:

John Lasseter was a Disney animator who went to work with a small company of graphics hackers. The company grew and grew and grew and now everyone knows Pixar. His SIGGRAPH 1987 paper was a seminal work where he introduced the graphics world to the principles of animation. The basic content is the same as the Johnson and Thomas chapter, but its more condensed, and the examples are from Pixar films.

+John Lasseter. Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D computer animation. SIGGRAPH 1987. (acm site with PDF). Note, there are many summaries of this paper on the web. Here’s one by a well-known animator. But do read the original. (well, you’re even better off reading a Disney thing first, then reading this for historical context – if you’re interested ).

Our discussion of animation is mainly about to ADDING motion to things, not necessarily visualizing motion. (in which case exageration and staging would be distortions). To get you thinking about showing motion, we’ll think about the opposite problem of animation:

Cutting, J. E. (2002). Representing motion in a static image: constraints and parallels in art, science, and popular culture. Perception, 31(10), 1165-93. [(online)](http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p3318)

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