Reading and Discussion 2: Week 2 – Why Visualize

by gleicherapi on August 1, 2017

Initial Posting Due: Tue, Sep 12 at (Canvas Link)

Readings

First: Unrelated to the main topic, we will be talking about how to critique and practicing critique in class. Usually, we just critique – but one of my goals in this class is to teach people to do it more effectively. This chapter (which is part of a whole book on how to critique productively) will hopefully give you some things to think about, although ultimately, I think it just takes practice.

  • “Understanding Critique,” Chapter 1 of Discussing Design by Adam Conor and Aaron Irizarry, O’Reilly Books, 2015. Chapter available online as a sampler from the publisher. (pp. 7-25, 18 pages)

The main readings are intended to give you a sense of why we do visualization, and why we bother to try to do it correctly. If you haven’t done the first week’s readings, please do them first.

Again, there is a lot of reading this week, but again, it’s fairly light.

  1. The Dance of Meaning (Chapter 9 of Visual Thinking for Design) (Ware-9-Meaning.pdf 2.7 mb)

    Yes, we’re reading the last chapter first. You might want to skim through the book leading up to it (I basically read quickly) it in one sitting. Reading the ending might motivate you to read the whole thing (which we will later). The perspective here is how the perceptual science might suggest why vis is interesting.

  2. Why Visualize (Chapter 1 of Cairo’s The Functional Art) (theFunctionalArtCh1.pdf 7.8 mb)

  3. The Beauty Paradox (Chapter 3 of Cairo’s The Functional Art) (theFunctionalArtCh3.pdf 11.4 mb)

    This chapter gets into the philosophy of evaluation. Cairo has an interesting (and non-academic) perspective. We’re reading this now (rather than when we get to evaluation) because it’s good food for thought, and it has a good discussion of Tufte.

  4. Visual Statistical Thinking (Chapter 2 of Tufte’s Visualizing Explanations) (3-VE-2-Visual-Statistical-Thinking.pdf 25.1 mb)

    Chapter 2 “Visual Statistical Thinking” from Tufte’s Visual Explanations (pages 26-53; 27 pages) . The perspective here is historical – what can happen when Visualizations work or fail. Reading Cairo’s chapter first will make it easier to appreciate Tufte.

  5. The first 17 pages of the Introduction to “Information Visualization: Using Visualization to Think” by Card, Mackinlay, and Schneiderman (01-InfoVis-CardMackinlaySchneid-Chap1.pdf – 77mb).

    This is a 1999 book that consists of this intro, and a bunch of seminal papers. The examples are old, but the main points are timeless. It is the best thing I know of that gets at Vis from the cognitive science perspective. The rest of the chapter (past page 17) is good too, but more redundant with other things we’ll read – so it’s optional. Although, every time I go back to it, I am amazed how good this is – despite being old.

Online Discussion

Initial Posting Due: Tue, Sep 12 at (Canvas Link)

In this week’s lecture and readings, we asked the question “Why Visualize?” Hopefully, you got the answer “because well designed visualization can be useful,” and a sense of why this is.

For this week’s discussion, I’d like you to think about those two things. Make a posting about each question.

  1. Why does one make a visualization? What are the purposes of visualizing? What might you try to achieve by doing it?

  2. Why is visualization an attractive way to present or interact with information? What are the alternatives? What can well designed visualizations do that other modalities cannot? (cognitive and perceptual perspectives come in here)

At this point, you probably don’t have the whole story – we’ll be expanding on these questions over the course of the semester. But from the readings (this week’s and last week’s) you’ve seen many examples, and gotten a taste of some of the factors that make visualization uniquely effective (when done correctly).

As usual, make the two required postings and discuss with your online group. These questions are more about making you think about the topic, rather than having right and wrong answers. (There are lots of right answers, but there are also some wrong ones)

Seek and Find 1: Bring Me a Visualization!

by gleicherapi on August 1, 2017

Due: Fri, Sep 08 (Cutoff:Fri, Sep 22)
Canvas Link: Seek and Find 1: Bring Me a Visualization! on CanvasGeneral Instructions: See the seek and find assignment rules
Specific Instructions (Discussion Prompt):

Seek and Find 1: Bring Me A Visualization!

We want you to be a little more aware of the visualizations that you encounter in your life. We also want to work out the mechanics of handing in assignments, specifically seek and finds.

The idea here is to see how common visualizations are in the world. My guess is you’ve seen a lot of them in the past week. Bring us one of them. It should be something you find interesting, and would have encountered in your life. You shouldn’t have to look hard to find one. But, you might want to look a little bit for an interesting one.

For this week, bring us any visualization. Subject to the Seek and Find ground rules.

For week 1, you can pick any data visualization – but pick one that you encountered recently. Either something from your day to day life, your research, your hobbies, …

In your description, tell us where you encountered it and why you were interested in it. Don’t worry about judging it for now.

When you embed your image into your canvas posting (see instructions) please make sure that it isn’t set to be too big.

After you’ve uploaded your image, have a look at what other people have posted! While you aren’t required to comment / discuss, it can be an interesting thing to do.

Reading and Discussion 1: Week 1 – What is Visualization

by gleicherapi on August 1, 2017

Initial Posting Due: Thu, Sep 07 at (Canvas Link)

Readings

This week there is a fairly large amount of readings – because we don’t have much else going on. The reading isn’t as bad as it looks because it’s all fairly light.

The main goal here is to give you a sense of what visualization is. I want you to get some different perspectives, so you can form your own.

Most of these are from textbooks (see the Books page). A goal is to introduce you to the people you’ll be learning from this semester (including me!).

  1. The Course Web Page – make sure you understand the class policies and procedures, and have read the “How to Vis” post. There will be some redundancy with lecture, but this is stuff I really want you to know.
  2. What we talk about when we talk about visualization (Chapter 1 of The Truthful Art) (theTruthfulArtCh1.pdf 5.7 mb) This will be your first exposure to Alberto Cairo’s books (see my discussion from the Spring). A great place to start the class.
  3. Preface (from Munzner’s Visualization Analysis & Design)(Munzner-00-FrontMatter.pdf 256 kb) – yes, I want you to read the Preface of the textbook. It will give you a sense of what’s coming.
  4. What’s Vis (Chapter 1 from Munzner’s Visualization Analysis & Design) (Munzner-01-Intro.pdf 308 kb)
  5. Graphical Excellence (Chapter 1 of Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) (1-VDQI-1-GraphicalExcellence.pdf 33.8 mb)
  6. Two Blog Postings by Robert Kosara: What is Visualization? A Definition and The Many Names of Visualization – read these to get a viewpoint different than mine.

Online Discussion

Initial Posting Due: Thu, Sep 07 at (Canvas Link)

Each week’s discussion (which is not to be confused with the weekly Seek and Find) will have two main parts: 1-2 required postings, and discussion.

Online discussions (and all handins) are handled with the Course’s Canvas. To make the discussions more manageable, the class is broken into smaller groups. If something goes wrong and you aren’t part of a group or Canvas won’t let you post to a discussion, contact the instructor and we can try to fix it. Also, note that you cannot see other’s postings until you have made one yourself.

For this week’s two required postings:

  1. Please make a posting saying what your interest in visualization is (why are you taking this class?). There is no right or wrong answers (I am hoping that you have a better reason than “It’s a class at a convenient time”, but we aren’t going to judge your answers). It’s just a conversation starter, and a chance to make sure that Canvas is working.

  2. From the readings (including the class web – be sure you’ve read the “How to Visualize” posting), you should have gotten a few different definitions of what visualization is – including mine. You’ll also get a sense of what is in the textbook (Munzner’s preface has a summary) and the plan for the class. And hopefully you have a sense of my “4 step process” for visualization and the “4 components of visualization.” For your posting, talk about how these things (definitions of visualization, topics from the book and class, my process) fit with your interests. What are you most eager to learn more about?

You are required to discuss as part of these discussions. In the past I always gave a minimum number of postings in response to others (3), but rather than being quantitative, I’d prefer that people just do “enough.” The discussion aspect is a key part of the learning process.

Admittedly, for this assignment, there isn’t too much to discuss. But hopefully you can find things to talk about. In future weeks, the discussion topics will be better chosen to help reinforce class concepts.

This week’s assignment has an additional piece: you must set up your Canvas Profile. This will facilitate discussions in the future.

  1. On the upper right of the Canvas screen click on your name – this gets to your overall stuff.
  2. Under “settings” (on the left side) – set your “Display Name” to “FirstName LastName” (so for me it’s “Mike Gleicher”). This way, when people see you in a discussion, it’ll look better.
  3. Please leave “Sortable Name” as LastName,Firstname
  4. Under “Profile” – edit your profile. A picture is really helpful. A short bio – what department you are in, … can help people know who they are talking to. If you have a personal home page, it’s nice to add a link to that as well.

Setting your profile up is required – you won’t get points for doing the assignment unless you do it.

This will be the Course Web for CS765 (Data Visualization) for Fall 2017

by Mike Gleicher on July 21, 2017

Not much here yet…

But, you can look at the Course Web for Spring 2017 to see what we did last semester. This semester we’ll fix some of the bugs of the last offering, but it will basically be a similar class.

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