DE10: My Questions and Your Questions

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Design Challenge 2
Design Exercise

Unlike last week, when all the visualizations were exploratory, here they are meant to be “final” - they should stand alone (with good labels and captions). You are asked to turn in a “rationale” (why you think it is effective, what you think it shows), but the visualization should “work” without it.

You will turn this assignment in using the Canvas survey Design Exercise 10: My Questions - Your Questions (due Fri, Nov 08). While the assignment is due on Friday, November 8th, we will accept assignments until Monday, November 11th without penalty.

If you are participating in the Collaborative Learning Opportunity, you will have assignments as part of Design Discussion 2: DE10 Drafts and Critiques.

Part 1: My Questions

Last week, I posed 4 questions for you to consider. I warned you that you would have to make visualizations from some of them. As a reminder:

  1. What categories have the most differences between sexes? Did this change over the years?
  2. Do employed people spend their time differently on weekends (non-work days) than unemployed people? (and if so how)
  3. Do people who socialize/relax more do it consistently (spread across the week), or do they do it more on certain days? (i.e., do high socializers have different patterns across the week than low socializers?) Does this hold across different age groups?
  4. What states have the biggest differences (in time usage) between 25-35 year olds and 55-65 year olds? Be aware that the trends will be impacted by employment and whether they have kids.

You need to make 2 visualizations. One is your choice, and the other is given.

If you are in a CLO:

  1. Your choice: any question other than the one you were assigned.
  2. The question you were assigned.

If you are not in a CLO:

  1. Your choice: any question. (I was going to say “the one you said you wanted to pick in DE9” - but I’ll be honest, we won’t check).
  2. If you chose #1, do #3 (and vice versa), if you chose #2, do #4 (and vice versa) (so 1->3, 2->4, 3->1, 4->2).

For both turn in a “good” visualization and a rationale.

Part 2: Critique

If you are in a CLO, you did critiques in your design discussion.

If you are not in a CLO, you need to do 3 2 critiques. We will provide the designs here.

We assess the quality of the critiques - not the visualizations they critique.

Part 3: More than the Average

Consider the following questions:

What do people do more of on the weekends (than workdays)?

The quick answer (that you probably gave last week) was to show which categories went up or down on average. (the sleep category goes up on the weekend).

Of course, over the many people surveyed, there is a range of things that happen.

Provide a visualization (and rationale) that provides a richer sense of the differences than just the category averages. You might look at distributions, subgroups, or anything else that shows that the differences between weekdays and weekends is more than just the averages.

Part 4: More Data

We gave you the broad category data, and a few of the specific categories. We also gave you a few demographics variables. There are a lot more variables you could look at (specific time usages, other demographic details).

Have a look at the data documentation. The BLS web page is the best source. The two most relevant files are the Activity Lexicon (for the detailed time categories) and the CPS Data Dictionary. These correspond to the ATUS 2003–2023 Activity summary file (zip) and the household information file.

If you could add some more variables, which ones would you want to add?

Pick at least 3 different variables (not in the data we gave you) and for each, give at least 3 new questions you would want to explore that would use that data.