Using Visualization in the Classroom Lisa Spiro Digital Media Center October

What data would you like to visualize? (Research, teaching, &c)

Why is visualization significant? Hans Rosling, professor of global health and founder of GapMinder, at TEDTalks Hans RoslingGapMinder

Key points Visualization can enhance understanding Different visualization methods are appropriate to different types of data Free online tools such as ManyEyes, Swivel & Google Docs: Make it (fairly) easy to create a visualization Encourage visual literacy Build dialogue and community

Information Explosion: Why We Need Visualization Dutch researchers estimate that the Indexed Web contains at least billion pages Dutch researchers Many other data sources: collected by sensors, demographic, experimental, textual, economic, etc. See for up-to-date ticker of amount of data produced in 2008http:// Visualization can help us make sense of this flood of data (e.g. Google Trends to show what people are searching for)Google Trends

What is visualization? “any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message” (Wikipedia)Wikipedia “a systematic, rule-based, external, permanent, and graphic representation that depicts information in a way that is conducive to acquiring insights, developing an elaborate understanding, or communicating experiences” (Lengler & Eppler)

Examples of Information Visualizations Pie chart Timeline Gantt Chart Metaphoric, e.g. iceberg Cartoon Org chart

The Importance of Visual Literacy Our culture is becoming increasingly visual--it’s important for people to interpret and represent visual data accurately Promote democracy & dialog “ [Communities function] better if everyone can read. I believe data visualization, like reading, makes people smarter. When they have access to more information, they can have more interesting conversations.” (Martin Wattenberg, Many Eyes)

How Visualization Enhances Cognition 1. by increasing cognitive resources, such as by using a visual resource to expand human working memory, 2. by reducing search, such as by representing a large amount of data in a small space, 3. by enhancing the recognition of patterns… 4. by supporting the easy perceptual inference of relationships that are otherwise more difficult to induce, 5. by perceptual monitoring of a large number of potential events, and 6. by providing a manipulable medium that, unlike static diagrams, enables the exploration of a space of parameter values. Stuart Card, J.D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman (1999). Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco. (via Wikipedia)Wikipedia

Seeing & Insight: John Snow’s Cholera Map (1854) Cholera epidemic in 1854 London was attributed to miasma (air) Snow mapped cholera cases & demonstrated that origin was a Soho water pump See Steven Johnson’s TED Talk on the mapTED Talk

Cartographic Visualizations

Visualizing “Historical Weather Maps” “We know where the hurricanes ending up hitting and can retrospectively understand how these complex processes unfolded. In a similar process, we can comprehend the historical weather, tracing where the currents led, how the storms brewed, and how the unpredictable somehow came to pass.” (Ed Ayers, “Mapping Freedom”)Mapping Freedom “Exposing my language-based discipline of history to the visual, the graphic, and the dynamic throws it off balance. And that's exactly what the humanities, like all academic disciplines, need to do if they are to stay alive and vital.” (Ed Ayers, “Mapping Freedom”)

Valley & Historical Visualization: The Emancipation Project

Cinematic Maps: Voting America Visualize evolution of American presidential politics by transforming data into dynamic images “to reveal patterns across time”

Interactive Crime Maps/ Mashups: EveryBlock Chicago EveryBlock Chicago Also includes civic data: news, reviews, bike rack installations, etc.

Textual Visualizations

Tag Clouds “a visualization of word frequencies.” (Many Eyes)

Word Trees Show relationships between key words and what comes next Word Tree: Obama’s Acceptance Speech

Comparison: Document Cloud Comparison

Wordle: Text Toy Wordle of George W. Bush’s Inaugural (2001)

Data Visualizations Lisa’s Last FM listening habits:

Treemap: Map of the Market

Stack/Stream Graphs Visualization of multiple time series; quantities across time Baby Names Across Time

Examples of Visualization Tools

Visualizing Data with ManyEyesManyEyes Motivation: with visualization, “an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern…. Visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data” (ManyEyes) Founded by 3 visualization experts working at IBM’s Visual Communication Lab Founders aim to “Democratize data” Participatory: upload or download data; add comments; participate in forums; rate data & visualizations Interactive: query data, change parameters, zoom in and out

How to Create a Many Eyes Visualization Find data Data that you have collected Census data Other data sources Massage data Get it into Excel or tab delimited format Standardize the values Upload into Many Eyes Select the appropriate visualizationvisualization Example: Enrollment in Primary Education,Enrollment in Primary Education, Mali

Line Graph: Change in CO2 Emissions by State “visualizing continuous change”

Matrix Chart: Survival on the Titanic “summarizes a multidimensional data set in a grid”

Swivel “Swivel's mission is to make data useful so people share insights, make great decisions and improve lives.” Free data upload & visualization (fee for keeping data private & secure) Features: Comparison Correlation Combination Toolbar for Excel (on PC) Example: Primary Education in MaliPrimary Education in Mali

Google Spreadsheets + Gadgets Create spreadsheets using Google Docs (free)Google Docs Collaborate Publish Visualize using charts & gadgetsgadgets To create a Motion Chart, select Insert> Gadgets> Motion Chart in Google Spreadsheets Getting the data into the right format can be tricky… Example: CptE1ZQeQk8LoNw CptE1ZQeQk8LoNw

Creating Your Own Cartographic Visualizations Google Maps’ My Maps feature allows you to create a map via an intuitive interfaceMy Maps With a data source and a little programming, you can create a more sophisticated Google Map Other mapping services: Many Eyes: World & country maps Yahoo Maps

Visualization as art

The Shape of Song Visualizes musical patterns as arcs Developed by Martin Wattenberg (like many of the visualizations we looked at)Martin Wattenberg /Works/song/ /Works/song/ Madonna, “Like A Prayer” “Clementine”

Principles of Graphical Excellence (Edward Tufte) “the well-designed presentation of interesting data--a matter of substance, of statistics, and of design. consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. nearly always multivariate. requires telling the truth about data." From: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

“Good Data Gone Bad”

Visualization in the Classroom Review the different kinds of visualizations available through ManyEyes Invite students to contribute their own visualizationscontribute their own visualizations Keep up with visualization blogs, e.g. & Get assistance finding, manipulating & mapping data from Fondren’s GIS-Data CenterGIS-Data Center See links at

Visualization & “Big Humanities” “Today sciences, business, governments and other agencies rely on computer-based analysis and visualization of large data sets and data flows. They employ statistical data analysis, data mining, information visualization, scientific visualization, visual analytics, and simulation. We believe that it is time that we start applying these techniques to cultural data.” (Lev Manovich)

Why Visualize? “The great fun of information visualization is that it gives you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.” (Ben Shneiderman, NYT)

To Summarize: I Love Charts