Adding Images to Your Canvas Posts

by Alper Sarikaya on January 6, 2017

For some assignments (notably the Seek and Find assignments), we may ask you to post an image alongside your posting.  You are free to use an external provider, but to make sure that images persist, we ask you to upload your image through Canvas.

In the class canvas, navigate to the sidebar and click “Account”.  In the expanded tab, click “Files”.

Make sure you’re in your own folder, then upload an image.  You might consider naming it something descriptive so you can find it later in the semester!

Meanwhile, to use the image in a posting, click the “Embed Image” icon (shown below) to embed the uploaded image in your post.

Under the dialog box that pops up, click the “Canvas” tab, navigate the folder structure to your uploaded image, and select your image.  Try to select dimensions smaller than 1000px on the longest edge.

If you have any problems with these instructions, let us know with a message on Canvas!

What’s new for 2017

by Mike Gleicher on December 28, 2016

The Spring 2017 edition of the Data Visualization Course is the 4th time I’ve taught it. At some point, I will have to stop saying it’s an experimental class – but not this time.

The class will be pretty much based on the 2015 edition. I think overall, the class worked well for most people. I want to keep the things that worked, and fix the things that didn’t.

What will be different this time?

  1. You (the students). A cool thing about this class is it gets a broad range of students. Each time, we get students from all over campus. Each time it’s a different mix. Each time there are people with different ideas, interests and abilities – and the class gets pulled in all kinds of directions by this.
  2. It has a real number. It’s not a special topics class anymore. This is mainly symbolic, except that it leads to #3.
  3. It is a graduate level course. In the past, it was a mixed level course (grads and undergrads). This is less that grad students are different than undergrads, but rather that all students in the class will be treated the same – no different assignments and policies. This should simplify things. Also, as a graduate level class, we can have high expectations for everyone.
  4. Simplify the assignment structure. Last time, there were discussions and readings twice a week for each lecture, seek and finds, other assignments, other discussions, challenge assignments, 838 only assignments, … It was hard to keep track of it all! This time, we’ll organize things by week, rather than by lecture – so there will be one reading assignment each week (potentially with multiple parts), and one discussion.
  5. More in-class exercises. Last time we did a few. People got a lot out of it. It was less boring than me lecturing. While we’ll still be a long way from a “flipped class” I want to keep moving in that direction. The room that the class is scheduled for may contribute. We’ll also see about me replacing lectures with videos or something.
  6. More practical aspects (implementation). In the past, I’ve avoided spending time on how to make visualizations – it was about how to design, critique, and understand them, and to appreciate the range of methods. The problem is that once I taught people what pictures to make, they wanted to make them! So we’ll have a bit more “practice” as part of the class. It still won’t be a lot. And it’s hard because we have a range of skills in the class. Implementation might mean different things if you’re a CS student who likes to program, or a humanities student who doesn’t want to learn how. I want to make this class work for both kinds of students.
  7. More emphasis on critique. It’s an incredibly valuable skill – not just for becoming a visualization designer, but in general. We’ll use critique as a way to be more example-based in learning about visualization.
  8. More emphasis on learning by doing (and critiquing). This kindof goes with 5&6&7, but I want to find ways to let people try things more.
  9. Improve the readings that people didn’t like. I think I got rid of the really bad ones from 2012.

A lot will stay the same. We’ll have the same basic schedule and list of topics. A lot of the readings from last time were good. Many of the assignments worked well.

At a high level, the emphasis on foundations (understanding the basics of tasks, design and perception) will remain. I think this is the right place to start – whether you are going to be a vis practitioner, research, or even just a vis reader.

The seek and finds will continue – these worked great. For a while, people thought they were silly. But after you’ve done them a bit, you realize that it does force you to see how the ideas do get used in practice. You’ll have to trust me.

The readings and discussions will continue – these also (generally) worked well. It depends on the students – some groups have more interesting discussions than others. I believe that if people participate in the conversations around the topics, they can’t help but learn them.

Assignment 1: Getting Started

by Mike Gleicher on December 28, 2016

The assignment for week 1 has a few parts:

  1. You need to set up your Canvas profile
  2. You need to do a reading assignment (which also means figuring out how to get readings)
  3. You need to make an initial posting to the first discussion
  4. You need to have some discussion as part of the discussion

Remember that there is also a seek and find assignment for this week. (as there will be every week)

This week’s assignment has all the parts of a regular weekly assignment so you can get used to it.

Grading: this will be graded according to our weird 70 point scale. (as in all weeks) There are separate grades for the initial postings and for subsequent discussion. For this week the need to set up your Canvas profile is important so it will count as part of both of those two grades. (so if you don’t do it, you will get “less then minimum”).

Handing in: Your Canvas Profile is in your Canvas Profile. Everything else happens in the Week 1 Discussion on Canvas .

Canvas Profile: (due Friday 1/20, or as soon as you are added to Canvas if you add late)

Please set up your profile in Canvas – this is important since it will make discussions much easier. It is easier to have a discussion with people you know something about. So please:

  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 that as well.

Reading: (best done before class on Friday 1/20)

See the Reading 1 page.

Initial Postings: (due Friday 1/20, or as soon as you are added to Canvas)

You can’t do this until after the first lecture (we won’t have the discussions set up).

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.

Note that you should be assigned to a discussion “group” by Canvas – a set of 6-10 classmates, randomly chosen. We will shuffle the groups periodically. There is a chance that you won’t be assigned to a group, in which case you should contact the TA. Also, we won’t make the groups until after the first lecture.

Then, after doing the readings, make a posting that answers the following 3 questions (in one posting):

  1. (at least) One thing that you read about in the Few article (or Cairo) that you’d like to learn more about. (OK, you can list more than one, but you should list at least one)
  2. (at least) One topic that is in the Munzner book that you’d like to learn more about (the preface has an outline of the book, but feel free to flip through the rest)
  3. One other thing that you’d like to get out of this class.

Note: if you can’t come up with answers to these 3 questions, maybe you shouldn’t be taking this class (something should interest you).

Discussion: (closes Friday 1/27 – but you need to be discussion during the week)

Comment on at least 2 other people’s answers to the questions. There isn’t that much that is controversial here, but often these initial conversations provoke some curiosity.

If you’re looking for something to discuss: Stephen Few (author of the overview web posting on the UX site) has a strong bias in his thinking on Vis – it’s quite different than the one that Alberto Cairo (author of the book chapters) has. Can you identify it / (contrast it with Cairo)? (we’ll discuss it in the coming weeks).

 

 

Grading and Assignments

by Mike Gleicher on December 28, 2016

I hate grading. It’s the worst part of teaching. I like to teach, I don’t like to judge. (for a good discussion of my grading philosophy, look at the thing I wrote for the 2015 class).

But, I understand that getting a grade is part of the game when you’re a student.

Because this is a graduate class, I want to treat everyone like a grown up. I don’t want to give you extra work just so I can evaluate you. But at the same time, I need to evaluate you.

So, I will not ask you to do things just for evaluation. The activities in this class are designed because I think you will learn something by doing them. (sometimes, I am wrong, and an experimental assignment is a flop – but my intent is that every assignment should be something that you will learn from).

In fact, I am arrogant enough to believe that if you do all the activities of the class (be engaged in discussions, do the exercises, …) you will get a good grip on the foundations of visualization, and should be assessed as such.

Grading most of the assignment is hard – deciding that an assignment is better than “just meeting the requirements” tends to be subjective. And distinguishing between good and very good is hard to do consistently. If you go beyond the minimums, you will learn more – and that should be your goal. If you put a lot of time and energy into things, then your main reward will be that you will get more out of it (in terms of what you learn).

We’ll score assignments on a 70 point scale. (purposefully not tied to percentages or grade levels):

  • 0 – nothing turned in
  • 5 – something turned in late
  • 10 – something turned in, but is not acceptable
  • 15 – something (minimally) acceptable, turned in late
  • 20 – something (minimally) acceptable (barely meets requirements)
  • 25 – acceptable, but late, assignment
  • 40 – acceptable (easily meets all requirements)
  • 50 – good assignment (or better)
  • 60 – notable assignment – with a warning that scores above 50 are unreliable. There is no reliable way to subjectively split hairs amongst the upper categories. when I’ve tried to make scores above “good” students would quibble over the difference between very good and great. It could be that no one gets above 50 (if we can’t decide on a reasonable criteria), or that everyone gets 60 (if everyone exceeds our expectations).

So, if you want to know how this maps to a letter grade… It doesn’t.

To get a good grade, you need to:

  1. Be consistent – think median and quintiles, not mean. We expect that people will miss a few assignments. But if you get a low (or no) score on more than a few things, that will hurt.
  2. Really do things. Again, think “do a good job all the time” not “do a great job some of the time”.

Of course, the better the job you do at the assignments, the more you will learn. So you should want to do a great job at everything – even if it doesn’t matter for your grade. The grade is not the big reward.

How does this lead to a letter grade? Good question… we’ll be arbitrary and subjective (well, not really), but…

  • consistently acceptable gets you (at least) a B
  • consistently good gets you (at least) an AB (maybe a few “just acceptable”, very few below that) – in a grad class, I suspect that everyone should be able to do this. Note that this is about consistency – outstanding assignments don’t make up for bad ones.
  • giving As is subjective – you need to excel some how, and it’s hard to predict what this looks like. In a grad class, I would expect 1/3 to 1/2 of the people should be able to do this. I have had classes where everyone got an A. It could be that you did a lot of notable assignments. It could be that you did something that sticks in our head so we go

In the ideal case, everyone does a great job with everything – and it’s obvious that everyone deserves an A.

Each aspect of the class will be graded independently:

  • Seek and Finds
  • Initial Discussion Postings
  • Online Discussion Participation (this includes both the weekly discussions and the optional “topical” discussions)
  • In-Class Exercises and Participation
  • Design Assignments

The exact weightings will be given later.

The Room We’re In (212 Ed Sci)

by Mike Gleicher on December 28, 2016

This class will be in Room 212 Education Sciences.

This is an unusual classroom. We’ll have to see how it works.

There is no “front.” It’s kindof “class in the round. This will probably be fabulous for in-class collaborative exercises, and terrible for lecturing.

One thing to be warned: the way the doors are, if you come in late, it will be very noticable. This is hopefully good incentive to come on time.

Course Web Under Construction

by Mike Gleicher on December 28, 2016

As I build the initial web page, things are probably pretty confusing as pages get added in a random order, links aren’t added until later, and things aren’t always in place.

Once the course web is built, I will post some instructions for navigating it. Until then, things may be hard to find.

Once the class gets running and is in “regular operation” things are generally easy to find – since you’re always looking for recent postings that appear here on the front page.

Seek and Find 1: Bring Me A Visualization!

by Mike Gleicher on December 27, 2016

Due: Friday, January 20th (see the class late policy). The assigment will close on Friday, January 27th. For this assignment, there may be some extra leniency to allow people to work out technical issues in handing in the assignment

Assessment: We will give you a score on the 70 point scale (see grading). A good assignment will include a valid picture and link, and a brief answer to the question. For this assignment, it’s hard to imagine how you can do something notable.

Turning it in: There will be a “discussion” on Canvas that you can post to. Make sure to include your picture and a link, and your answer to the question.

Learning Objectives (why are you doing this): 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.

What you need to do:

For this assignment you must bring us a …. (data) visualization!

(sorry, this is a reference to an old Monty Python movie – if you don’t know the reference, that line won’t be funny. Even if you do know the reference, it might not be funny).

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.

Each week, we will ask you to bring us a visualization (we will have these seek and find assignments every week). For this week, bring us any visualization. Subject to the Seek and Find ground rules:

  • It cannot be a visualization that you (or someone in class) made.
  • It must be publicly available.
  • You must be able to provide an image.
  • If it’s on a web page, you should copy a picture (either use a screen shot or copy the image). Please shrink the image to a reasonable size, if it’s too small for people to see the detail, they’ll be able to get it from the link you give.  Post your image on Canvas following these instructions.
  • Try to find something interesting (to you at least)
  • There may be other rules added

Create a posting and include a picture of the visualization. If you found the visualization on the web, provide a link to the page that it is on (if it’s hard to find on that page, give some clues like “on page 4 of https://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Papers/2015/AG15/Submission-FINAL-7-27-2015.pdf“). If you scanned it or photograph it, describe where you got it from (scanned from p7 of January 6th Capital Times).

Try to pick something that you don’t think anyone else will pick. Even though you can peek and see what others are posting, someone might post at the same time as you, so try to avoid redundancy although this isn’t a strict rule.

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, …

You are welcome to discuss other people’s submissions (you are allowed to comment on canvas). Discussion is not required for Seek and Find 1, but participating in optional discussions can contribute to your online participation grade.

Late Policies

by Mike Gleicher on December 27, 2016

All deadlines are anytime that day, in Madison’s time zone. So if something is due on Wednesday, it is any time on Wednesday. 1am Thursday is not Wednesday.

Addendum 1/27: sometimes, I will express a preference for things to be done before class (1pm). Usually this is for things where nothing is turned in online (like readings). If something really needs to be turned in before class, the deadline will be the day before, which is why you may see a bunch of Sunday deadlines.

The late penalties will depend on the assignment type. For some assignments, it is more important to do them on time because others will need to read them, or that they are necessary for class.

There will be a “closing date” after which we will not accept late assignments. This will usually be described with the assignment, but in the event that it is not, it will be 2 weeks after the due date.

For things that are turned in late (but before the closing date), we may consider it “very late.” This determination will be made subjectively.

The late policy is meant to apply cumulatively. If you are consistently on time, but are late occasionally, it won’t affect your grade.

The severity of the penalty depends on how much it affects the learning goals. For example:

    • Seek and Finds: being late means we cannot use what you’ve found in class discussion and that the class discussion might cloud your search.
    • Initial Required Postings: being late means that your posting can’t be used to seed the discussion.
    • Discussion: If you don’t discuss when everyone else is discussing, it is “adding your thoughts at the end” rather than discussing.
    • Initial Design Submissions: being late means that your designs aren’t available for critique.

In other words, the deadlines are (almost always) there for a reason.

In general, being late (consistently) will cost you between 1/2 to 1 letter grade (e.g. an A drops to an AB or a B). Not doing assignments hurts more.

In class assignments cannot be done late. You are either present for the experience, or you aren’t.

This is (or will be) the CS765 Course Web!

by Mike Gleicher on November 13, 2016

This is the first posting – at some point, I’ll start to get the content together!

You might be looking for the course announcement or last year’s course web.

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