October 29, 2014 Visualization Last week: data & capta. Parameterization. Narrative vs. database. Relational database vs. flat database.

What kind of power do visualizations have? Databases, continued What kind of power do visualizations have? A brief history of visualization How to lie with dataviz Create your own On Monday: databases are where we store data. Data vs. capta. Relational database vs. flat database. Visualizations have power. You have to have a certain relationship with data, and even with history, to think that it makes sense to make information visualizations. Today: why visualizations have so much power, where that authority comes from, kinds of visualization, ways to lie with visualizations, creating your own visualizations

What is information visualization? “a mapping between discrete data and a visual representation” Why do we visualize? Why is visualization so popular now?

We tend to think that information graphics have some special access to the truth. Visualizations only make sense if you want to compare discrete quantities — so you have to be in a cultural context that countenances the division and categorization of matter.

gapminder.org/world discussion, then dataviz exercise

Joseph Priestley, British polymath Joseph Priestley, British polymath. Lectures on History, 1788, is a set of lectures given at the Warrington Academy. This chart was designed as a supplement, to be hung in a study. Partly a learning tool, but also a device to demonstrate a pedagogical outlook. Believed that the study of history was actually a branch of divinity that increases our knowledge of God and demonstrates God’s plan. If we are able to understand change over time, we’ll understand God’s plan for us. We should see time as a continuum, history as a process. That’s why the Roman Empire and Europe features so prominently; because it’s a chart of human progress.

William Playfair, 1759-1823. Produced The Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786: first statistical graphics, including bar graphs and line graphs. 1801: Statistical Breviary, first pie chart. Believed that as knowledge increases amongst mankind, “it becomes more and more desirable to abbreviate and facilitate the modes of conveying information from one person to another, and from one individual to the many.” Industrial Revolution (trained under James Watt). Influenced by Empiricists, 17th & 18th century, who argued that knowledge comes from experience, vs. rationlists (like Descartes) who argued that knowledge could be deduced. Rely on aggregate empirical data, repetition over time — a very particular view of history. Playfair called his work an “atlas” because he perceived a correlation between what he was doing and mapmaking. Incorporates notions from Adam Smith that commerce can elevate nations, importance of quantifying and measuring, as well as Gibbons’s Decline and Fall -- prolonged historical survey. Particular relationship with history -- thinking about the past as data. Suggests that details about the past can be gathered, aggregated, and used to derive predictions and recommendations about the future. On inspecting any one of these charts attentively,” he pronounces 34  in the introduction, “a sufficiently distinct impression will be made, to 35  remain unimpaired for a time, and the idea which does remain will be 36  simple and complete” (xiv).

http://bit.ly/dh1014b Discuss resources