Weeks in Vis

This week will be unusual, as we “catch up” from last week when we made the detour to connect theory and practice. Also, there is no class meeting on Wednesday and no surveys.

This week, we’ll explicitly talk about scale: what do we do when the data gets big. This problem is pervasive: we’ve been dealing with it all along, and will continue to deal with it with everything else we talk about. This week, we’ll try to get some vocabulary to talk about the problems and their solutions.

This is an unusual week in many ways. The reading (and discussion/seek-and-find) topic is implementation - which is a weird topic since there’s a choose-your-own adventure aspect to it. Everyone has different needs and interests on this one.

But to make things even more unusual, I will be out of town for the class periods. On Monday, we’ll have a guest lecture (Prof. Karen Schloss of the Department of Psychology), and we’ll also have an ICE. On Wednesday, we’ll have a full-period ICE (led by Cat).

This week, we’ll learn about encodings the way we map data to things we see. Encodings give the basics building blocks that we build visualizations from. The key idea is that rather than thinking about chart types, we think about them in terms of building blocks. That way we don’t need to learn zillions of chart types… we learn a few basic building blocks that we can assemble into charts as needed. An advantage to this approach: it lets us reason about why we might make certain choices.

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

This is our first full week of class (September 9-13). Hopefully, you will get used to the Weekly Rhythm. This week will follow the “usual” pattern. The week “starts” the Friday before with the “week in Vis” (this posting). This weekly message goes out as a Canvas Announcement, but also appears on the course web at The Week in Vis: Week 02.

This is the first of a weekly posting called The Week in Vis that explains what is going on in class during the week. It also should give you context for why we are doing things, and how it all fits together (so it is part of the “content” for the course). Each week, it will be posted as a Canvas Announcement. It is also a page on the course web (see The Week in Vis: Week 01).

Usually, I make this posting on Friday (before the week), but this is not a normal week.

No, we really don’t start counting at 0, this is the week(s) before class.

Normally, there is a posting each week about what will happen in class during the week to help you get ready for it. This is a bit of a practice for that.