Lectures

Week 1 - Introduction

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (7:22) Course Website.
Course Overview (7:56) Course Goals & Approach, Gameplan, Term Project.
Your Guide (2:18) and Your Guide 2 (5:14) InfoVis relevant content.
InfoVis - Intro (14:54) Goals and Key Design Principles of InfoVis, Abstract vs. Spatial Data, Examples.

Files

Download: Handout

Resources

Information Visualization

Ben Shneiderman talking about his research and Information Visualization

Wikipedia

Books

Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think by Card, Mackinlay, and Shneiderman (eds.)
Information Visualization: Perception for Design (Interactive Technologies) by Colin Ware
The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization (Voices That Matter) by Alberto Cairo
Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten by Stephen Few
Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information by Manuel Lima

Readings

NYTimes: The Future Of Work - It’s Data, Baby
InfoVis Blogs: Flowing Data | Infosthetics | Visual Complexity | Perceptual Edge | Storytellingwithdata

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Week 2 - Human Visual Perception

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (1:50)
Visual Perception - Part 1 (20:52) Stage of Visual Processing, Luminance vs. Color, Pre-Attentive Processing.
Visual Perception - Part 2 (22:49) Gestalt Laws, Motion Perception, Space Perception.
Visual Perception - Part 3 (10:34) Depth Cues, Recap, Important for InfoVis Design.
Visual Perception - Recap (4:09) Recap of Key Facts & Principles.

Files

Download: Handout

Readings

Readings:

Data Journalism Handbook - Online Version
Introduction
In The Newsroom
Case studies

Resources

Human Visual Perception

Perception: Pre-Attentive Processing | Motion Perception : Kinetic Motion + Biological Motion

iPod Ads: Shape-from-Contour & Cause/Effect | add Shape-from-Shading | soften Contrast Effects | complete ad campaign

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Week 3 - Tufte + Human Computer Interaction

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (1:40)
Tufte - Part 1 (18:07) Minard, Escape Flatland, Tufte's Measures.
Tufte - Part 2 (7:30) Graph & Chart Tips, Hierarchy of Visual Features, Tufte's Principles.
HCI - Part 1 (34:50) Key Concepts, LUCID, Diversity, Interaction Styles.
HCI - Part 2 (20:33) User-Centered Design, Nielen's 10 Heuristics.

Files

Download: Handout

Readings

Readings:

Data Journalism Handbook - Online Version
Getting Data
Understanding Data
Delivering Data

Resources

Edward Tufte

Tufte would call CNN graphics chart-junk | Minard's Graph recreated in Excel with BeGraphic Add-in

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Week 4 - InfoVis Principles & Classics

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (3:20)
InfoVis - Part 1 (18:20) Origins, Key Design Principles, Toolbox.
InfoVis - Part 2 (15:04) Design & Interaction, Stacked Scatterplots, SeeSoft, FilmFinder, Starfields, PerspectiveWall.
InfoVis - Part 3 (18:49) Hierarchical Data, ConeTree, Treemaps, Recap.
InfoVis - Part 4 (12:34) Focus+Context, Fisheye, TableLens, HyperbolicTree, Interaction Benefits.
InfoVisClassics (20:39) Demos of FilmFinder, Starfields, PerspectiveWall, ConeTree, TableLens, HyperbolicTree.

Files

Download: Handout

Readings

Readings:

Using Vision To Think: Information Visualization (pp. 1 - 33 or available in eCollege)
Value of Information Visualization by J.-D. Fekete et al. (pp. 1- 18 or available in eCollege)
A Tour through the Visualization Zoo by Jeffrey Heer et al.
Storytelling: The Next Step for Visualization by R. Kosara & J. Mackinlay.

Resources

History: Milestones of DataVis
Taxonomy of Visualization Types: Periodic Table of Visualization
Treemaps: Site | History | Demo | Video
Examples: SmartMoney | Newsmap | Hivegroup
Compare: 2011 Budget Proposal vs. 2013 Budget Proposal hierarchical visualizations created by NYTimes
Focus+Context: Non-linear Magnification | FisheyeMenu | Walrus

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Week 5 - Data Visualization

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (6:02)
Demo and Common Display Types (3:45) Demo of Baby Names Voyager, Common Display Types.
Which Common Display Type When (4:34)
Gapminder / Motion Chart and Many Eyes Treemap (4:40)
1st Visualization Assignment (10:25) Google Motion Chart and Many Eyes Treemap.

Files

Download: Handout

Readings

Readings:

The Joy of Stats: one-hour documentary broadcast by BBC with Hans Rosling explaining key statistical concepts and some of the ways how data is being visualized.
Crime Spotting: open data and map visualization.
Florence Nightingale: statistical visualizations.
Averages
Correlation

Resources

Tools: Baby Name Voyager | Google Chart Tools | Visual.ly | Protovis | KDMC - DataVis
Data Display Types: Selection Matrix | Visual Pattern Recognition
ManyEyes (Treemap)
Gapminder / Google Motion Chart
D3.js (Data-Driven Documents)
Tableau (Business Intelligence Software)
Public Data Sets

ManyEyes

Irene Greif (IBM) talking about ManyEyes.

Site | Visualization Types | Data Formats | Tour

Treemap
Example
Create Treemap (read data requirements)
Create Comparison Treemap (need time variable)

Gapminder / Google Motion Chart

Wikipedia
Gapminder: Site | Videos
Google Motion Chart: How to Create (read data requirements) | Data Format | Tutorial created by MLIS student.
Need Google Drive account (Overview | Help) and use Google Docs - Spreadsheet.

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes | TED: Debunking Third-World Myths | What stops Population Growth?

D3.js - Data-Driven Documents

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG and CSS. D3’s emphasis on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework, combining powerful visualization components and a data-driven approach to DOM manipulation.

Site | Examples | Tutorials | Documentation
Getting Started with d3 (student created tutorial)
Gallery | Showreel
Line Chart | Bar Chart | Pie Chart | Scatterplot
Grouped Bars | Stacked Bars | Normalized Stacked Bars | Stacked-to-Grouped Bars

Tableau - Business Intelligence Software

Tableau allows users to connect to data in a few clicks, then visualize and create interactive, sharable dashboards with a few more. It's easy enough that any Excel user can learn it, but powerful enough to satisfy even the most complex analytical problems.

Tableau for Teaching
Download | Student Edition
Videos
Demo | Beginner | On-Demand Videos
Tutorials
Introduction to Tableau | Calculations | Mapping

Tutorial created by MLIS student
Preparing Excel Files for Analysis

Up and Running with Tableau with Curt Frye (LyndaCampus) Login to LyndaCampus

Introduction
Welcome (0:57)
What you should know before watching this course (0:46)
Using the exercise files (0:34)

Introducing Tableau
Downloading Tableau (1:45)
Installing Tableau drivers (2:03)
Introducing Tableau file types (2:00)
Getting help in Tableau (1:36)
Introducing the Tableau user interface (4:21)

Managing Data Sources and Visualization
Connecting to a data source (2:12)
Joining related data sources (4:21)
Creating a visualization using Show Me (1:50)
Reordering and removing visualization fields (1:57)
Sorting and filtering Tableau data (5:57)
Creating a calculated field (3:48)
Changing the summary operation (2:12)
Adding totals and subtotals to a cross-tab (2:57)

Managing Tableau Worksheets and Workbook
Displaying the data underlying a workbook (1:49)
Adding, duplicating, and renaming worksheets (2:12)
Reordering, clearing, and deleting worksheets (1:58)
Changing a worksheet's tab color (1:10)
Showing or hiding worksheet elements (2:11)
Saving your changes (2:12)
Saving your workbook as a PDF file (2:01)
Creating a packaged workbook (1:17)

Formatting Tableau Visualization
Changing the visual summary type (1:37)
Creating a heat map (3:36)
Creating a box-and-whisker plot (2:25)
Changing the appearance of your data (4:02)
Resizing a visualization (1:47)
Displaying a visualization in Presentation mode (1:46)

Creating Maps, Dashboards, and Webpage
Ensuring your data can be mapped (1:43)
Creating a basic map (3:10)
Setting map options (2:49)
Creating a dashboard (1:57)
Adding elements to a dashboard (2:47)

Conclusion
Further resources (0:49)

Public Data

Rutgers Library Data
Rutgers Library Data | Rutgers Website Stats
Data compiled by 2009 InfoVis class:
Rutgers Peers
ARL_NCES
RUL_Distributed Technical Services
RUL_SiteStats

Data Analysis

Ways to Become Acquainted with a Data Set for the First Time (Stephen Few)
Google Refine: power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up and transforming it from one format into another.
School of Data
Courses: Data Fundamentals, Data Extraction, Data Cleaning, Geocoding, Understanding Data, Data Journalism and more.
Resources: for Extracting, Cleaning, Analyzing, Presenting, Sharing Data.
Knight Digital Media Center
Intro into Cleaning Data
Spreadsheets
LyndaCampus
Managing & Analyzing Data in Excel with Dennis Taylor
Sorting Data | Filtering Data | Advanced Filters | Eliminating Duplicate Data
Cleaning Up Your Excel Data with Dennis Taylor

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Week 6 - Interactive Infographics

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (1:44)
Infographics & NYTimes (18:34) Infographis vs. InfoVis, Isotype, NYTimes Visualizations.

Files

Download: Handout

Readings

Readings:

Using Information Design & Infographics to Advocate

Resources

NYTimes Visualizations

Amanda Cox - Visualizing data at the New York Times

NYTimes: is leading adopter of visualization tools in the news media and at the forefront of enhancing new stories with interactive content.
Visualization Team
Matthew Ericson: When maps should not be maps
Michael Bostock (developer of D3)
Visualizations & DataStories
List of NYTimes visualizations (up to 2011)
Remade in America | Debt Trap | Toxic Water
Netflix Queues | Daily Acitvities | Degrees of Debt
Keys to Victory | Paths to White House | How Obama Won Re-election and Shift from 2008
Maps
2012 US Elections | 2008 US Elections
Immigration Explorer | Mapping US Census |
Mapping America: Every City, Every Block
Hierarchical Data
Compare: 2011 Budget vs. 2013 Budget proposals

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Week 7 - Map & Geographic Visualization

Lectures

Topics:

Intro (2:40)
Map & Geo Visualization (5:34) Definitions, Examples, where2.0 Conference, Tools.
2nd Visualization Assignment (10:12) Tableau, Google Fusion Tables.