Hello Visualization
An overview of the course, what you will learn, and what we will be doing together. We look at 4 different perspectives on data visualization in order to paint a landscape of ideas that will be revisited and expanded upon throughout the rest of the semester.
Lesson Table of Contents
Video
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Resources mentioned in the video can be found in links. Videos are hosted by Vimeo. You may disable Video Embeds or view the video on Vimeo.
Links
Links which may be helpful to complete this lesson:
Written materials
In addition to the video, you may also
download slides from this lesson.
Exercise
For getting warmed up, please write about 4 sentences reflecting on what you are hoping to gain from the course. If you are feel comfortable and want to engage with other learners, post your response online!
Note that the Zulip community is not available to this MOOC. Please consider sharing your exercise via social media such as Bluesky with the tag #OpenDataVizSciCourse.
Reading
We will learn more about how tools change the way we think. Please watch the very excellent Media for Thinking the Unthinkable lecture delivered by Bret Victor at the MIT Media Lab. A question for you to consider is what kinds of representations of thought do you use every day?
Next lecture
Ready to continue? Go to the
next lesson.
Works cited
This is the works cited from the lecture. Note that additional sources may be used in exercises and other supporting documentation.
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- R. Binx, "Vortex." 2015. Available: https://rachelbinx.com/data-visualization/vortex
- R. Binx, "Designing for Realtime Spacecraft Operations." BocoupLLC, Apr. 2016. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuYKhSHcRSQ
- Book Books Book, "We Feel Fine." YouTube, Dec. 2009. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi8WrnWNSzU
- W. S. Cleveland and R. McGill, "Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods," Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 79, no. 387, pp. 531–554, Sep. 1984, doi: 10.1080/01621459.1984.10478080.
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- A. KIRK, DATA VISUALISATION: a handbook for data driven design. S.l.: SAGE PUBLICATIONS, 2024.
- A. Kirk, "Visualizing Data." Visualising Data Ltd, 2024. Available: https://visualisingdata.com/
- T. Munzner, "A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation," IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 921–928, Nov. 2009, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2009.111.
- T. Munzner, "Visualization Analysis and Design." AK Peters Visualization Series, 2014. Available: https://books.apple.com/us/book/visualization-analysis-and-design/id1567434451
- T. Munzner, Visualization analysis and design. in A.K. Peters visualization series. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, CRC Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business, 2015.
- T. Munzner, "Task Abstraction (Ch 3), Visualization Analysis & Design, 2021." YouTube, 2021. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHljd-cgICY
- M. Nix, Visual simplexity: die Darstellung großer Datenmengen. Frankfurt am Main: entwickler.press, 2013.
- K. Rees and Periscopic, "U.S. Gun Deaths." Periscopic, 2018. Available: https://guns.periscopic.com/
- A. Pottinger, "FoodSim: San Francisco." 2023. Available: https://foodsimsf.com/
- A. Pottinger, "Income Gaps." 2023. Available: https://incomegaps.com/
- A. Pottinger, "Interactive Data Science." 2024. Available: https://interactivedatascience.courses/
- A. S. Pottinger et al., "Combining Game Design and Data Visualization to Inform Plastics Policy: Fostering Collaboration between Science, Decision-Makers, and Artificial Intelligence," 2023, arXiv. doi: 10.48550/ARXIV.2312.11359.
- A. Pottinger, L. Connor, B. Guzder-Williams, M. Weltman-Fahs, N. Gondek, and T. Bowles, "Climate-driven doubling of U.S. maize loss probability: Interactive simulation with neural network Monte Carlo," JDSSV, 2025. doi: 10.52933/jdssv.v5i3.134
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- J. Schell, The art of game design: a book of lenses, Third edition. Boca Raton: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
- J. Snow, On the mode of communication of cholera. London: John Churchill, 1855. Available: https://archive.org/details/b28985266/page/n57/mode/2up
- J. Stasko, C. Gorg, Z. Liu, and K. Singhal, "Jigsaw: Supporting Investigative Analysis through Interactive Visualization," in 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, Sacramento, CA, USA: IEEE, Oct. 2007, pp. 131–138. doi: 10.1109/VAST.2007.4389006.
- The Document Foundation, LibreOffice. (2024). The Document Foundation.
- ThoughtLab, The Wendy and Eric Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment, and Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory, "A Treaty to End Plastic Pollution. Forever." University of California, 2023. Available: https://plasticstreaty.berkeley.edu/
- B. Victor, "Inventing on Principle." CUSEC, 2012. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII
- B. Victor, "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable." MIT Media Lab, Apr. 04, 2013. Available: https://vimeo.com/67076984
- Visual Computing BLOG, "Tamara Munzner discussed quantification in terms of a nested model of visualization design and evaluation." Transregional Collaborative Research Center. Available: https://www.visual-computing.org/2018/10/17/computerscienceconferenceweek/201810_conferenceweek_munzner-2/
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- Wikipedia Contributors, "Bret Victor." Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Jun. 22, 2023. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Victor
- Wikipedia Contributors, "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge." Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Sep. 21, 2024. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galaxy%27s_Edge
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- N. Yee, "Motivations for Play in Online Games," CyberPsychology & Behavior, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 772–775, Dec. 2006, doi: 10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772.
- J. Harris and S. Kavar, "We Feel Fine." We Feel Fine., 2006. Available: http://www.wefeelfine.org and https://jjh.org/we-feel-fine.
- J. Harris, "The Web's Secret Stories." TED Conference., 2007. Available: https://youtu.be/zAvNlh2Z0GI?feature=shared.
- Thanks to https://unsplash.com/photos/DHl49oyrn7Y
