The Week in Vis 02 (Mon, Sep 9 – Fri, Sep 13): Why Visualize

by Mike Gleicher on September 7, 2019

Week in Vis 2 Mon, Sep 9-Fri, Sep 13

Week number 2 – we’re still getting things set up and not in the weekly rhythm, but hopefully, but the end of this week we’ll be in steady state.

First: if you haven’t done week 1’s work, please do it! We’ve extended the deadlines so that you can. The first readings are helpful preparation for this week. And we do want you to do all of the online discussions and seek and finds.

Note: the online discussions (both the “Online Discussions” and the Seek and Finds) stay “open” for discussion 1 week after the due date so that people can continue to discuss the initial postings.

The Quiz will not be available until after class Monday – or maybe Tuesday. It’s not due until Friday.

This week there are two (somewhat independent) topics. The lecture (and main readings) ask the question “why visualize?” This is another big reading week. Understanding why we might want to do visualization will be important to understand what it means to do it well.

The other topic is more skills-based: we’ll learn about how to do critique. There is a reading to get you thinking about it. Critique is a useful skill – not just for visualization and design. It’s something we need to do all the time, but rarely think about as a skill. Hopefully, the reading and in-class practice will help you develop your skill at critique.

Readings for the Week

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, because there is no design challenge yet.

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

    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, so you’re prepared when you read him next.

  2. Graphical Excellence (Chapter 1 of Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) (1-VDQI-1-GraphicalExcellence.pdf 33.8mb)

    Tufte’s fame, style and personality can get in the way of his message. Cairo (above on the list) will help us understand that. But, there’s no denying that Tufte has had influence – and there is a lot to learn from him.

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

    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.

  4. The first 17 pages of the Introduction to “Information Visualization: Using Visualization to Think” by Card, Mackinlay, and Schneiderman (01-InfoVis-CardMackinlaySchneid-Chap1.pdf 77.4mb) .

    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.

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)

Optional Readings

There’s already a lot to read, so I cannot require you to read these. But they are really valuable. The Tufte chapter is a classic. Both were required in earlier versions of the class.

  1. Visual Statistical Thinking (3-VE-2-Visual-Statistical-Thinking.pdf 25.1mb)

    Chapter 2 “Visual Statistical Thinking” from Tufte’s Visual Explanations (pages 26-53; 27 pages) . This is Tufte at his best/worst: describing two historical examples (John Snow’s map of the London Cholera Epidemic and The Challenger Disaster). His oversimplification of the role of visualization in these situations makes his points forceful, but not as black-and-white as he tries to make them. This used to be required, and may be discussed in class.

  2. Why Visualize: From Information to Wisdom Preface and Chapter 1 of The Functional Art (online at publisher) (theFunctionalArtCh1.pdf 7.8mb)

    This is a great introduction to thinking about data presentation from a journalists perspective, with Cairo’s great use of examples, clarity, and connection to a bigger picture. It’s optional since it’s a little off topic (it’s more about Data Journalism), and a little redundant with the other Cairo readings.

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