Here is some advice on making good “figures.” It is targeted towards design exercises, but really, they are advice on how to make good figures generally.

These ideas apply more to places where we are asking you to “tell stories” from data. This starts with DE04. If you’re putting a figure in a paper or a slide, you are telling a story as well.

In this assignment, you will make some visualizations from the Census Data. Actual visualizations based on data (unlike last time when we asked you to sketch). You will turn your assignment in using the Canvas survey Design Exercise 04: Pictures from Data (due Fri, Sep 27)

Design Exercise 3 will ask you to consider what visualizations to make to answer questions. We will continue to work with the Census Data.

This assignment will ask you to think more about the Census Data data set. The goal is to think about how questions and visualizations connect, and to start coming up with visualizations that answer questions.

Mechanics

This exercise will be turned in as a Canvas Survey: Design Exercise 03: Pictures and Questions. Most questions ask you to upload a file (a separate file for each question). You should be able to upload just about any image.

Hopefully, everyone is settling into the regular pattern of class. This week (or maybe next week, if you’re reading this at the end of Week 2 is another regular week. There is no class survey, but we have everything else as “normal”.

The topic for this week is abstraction: how do we talk about data and tasks in general ways. This will allow us to get away from the details of any specific problem, and to transfer our knowledge between problems. It will also allow us to consider general purpose tools. We’ll also dig into the Design Exercise and look at some tools

Invitations to our Tableau Cloud instance were sent out after class today.

You should receive an email with subject “You’ve Been Invited to Tableau Cloud” from the server (reghelp@onlinemail.tableau.com). Please accept the invitation and set up your account now. Even though we may not use Tableau until next week.

This is a tutorial on how to get started with Tableau using the Census Data for the Design Exercises. It will walk you through what I did to make a few initial pictures. This will show you some of the quirks of Tableau, and the dataset.

This is an update - especially for those who joined class late (we admitted a lot of students on or after the first day, but we should be done for now). We want everyone to get caught up on the first few assignments as soon as possible. Hopefully, we can get through the mechanics and administrative stuff and focused on learning Visualization!

On Friday, September 6, we closed the CS765-24 class. If you are not enrolled, you will not be. I apologize to those of you who wanted to take the class - there was more demand than capacity.

What can you do if you want to learn about Visualization?

• You cannot attend class. Please don’t come. See below. Showing up is only one of the parts of class. You also cannot access internal course materials on Canvas (fair use means just for students in class).
• You can look at the course web (or last year’s). This can give ideas that you can do on your own. The reading list is particularly good.
• I am trying to create resources that work for people outside of class, but it is a slow process. See Visualization Snacks.
• I will teach the class again in the future (probably next fall).

No attendance without enrolmment

One question I was asked (by email and in class): I cannot allow un-enrolled students to attend.

In our first design exercise (it is DE02 because it is in the second week), we will look at our data set and begin to think about why to visualize it. We’ll also practice critique.

Tableau is a commercial data analysis and visualization tool. The company generously provides it for use in classes through the Tableau for Teaching Program.

Here, we will give you a brief guide on how to get started with it, and pointers to some resources. We expect students to figure out how to work with Tableau enough for class.