Syllabus

Course Objectives

Students will learn to

Assignments

  1. Sparks Presentation (5%): prepare a 7min. slideshow presentation on a data visualization practitioner or team that is inspiring to you.
  2. Visualization Design (10%): design 10 divergent representations for the US Census data set and provide a rigorous rationale for your design choices. Present for design critique in class.
  3. Exploratory Data Analysis (10%): identify a dataset of interest and perform an exploratory analysis to understand the shape & structure of the data, investigate initial questions, and develop preliminary insights & hypotheses. Present a report on your findings.
  4. Interactive Visualization (20%): build a visualization that enables interactive exploration along at least three dimensions using a dataset of your own choosing and publish it on the web.
  5. Midterm Exam (10%): individual closed book exam, for 1 hour during class session. Comprises multiple-choice and written essay questions.
  6. Final Project (30%): build a web-based interactive visualization that allows you to answer questions about a topic of your own choosing. You will acquire the data, design your visualization, implement it using D3, and evaluate the results.
  7. Class Participation and Quizzes (15%): actively engages in class and online (Slack) in critique, analysis, and assisting peers. Expect a reading quiz most weeks (1 point per quiz question accumulated over semester, for 60% of total participation grade.)

Expectations

Caveat Emptor

Optional Textbooks