Data Visualization
Tufte’s Fundamental Principles of Analytical Design
- Show comparisons, contrasts, differences.
- Show causality, mechanism, explanation, systematic structure.
- Show multivariate data; that is, show more than 1 or 2 variables.
- Completely integrate words, numbers, images, diagrams.
- Thoroughly describe the evidence. Provide a detailed title, indicate the authors and sponsors, document the data sources, show complete measurement scales, point out relevant issues
Tufte’s Advice for Graphical Displays
- show the data
- induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else
- avoid distorting what the data have to say
- present many numbers in a small space
- make large data sets coherent
- encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
- reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure
- serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration
- be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.
Download a PDF of this chapter from The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Questions for Discussion
Why is data visualization important in your field?
What tools do you use to generate images?
What do your data visualization assignments look like right now?
What tools are available to your students?
How can your department or small groups of faculty encourage core learning in this area? What are you doing already?
Best Practices
- Be sure to give students learning materials related to data visualization and information design. Show examples of good and bad design.
- Scaffold assignments so that students create graphics for more and more complex data as the semester goes along.
- Allow students one exercise or assignment to explore the myriad concepts of data visualization before they apply it to data from your course.
- Establish Data Visualization workshops so that students understand the importance of audience and interpretation.
- Invite a guest lecturer to cover what you can’t!
Links
Piktochart – Infographic editor with lots of templates and features
Canva – Infographic editor.
Venngage (free for students) Infographic editor
Airtable: a relational database with visualization features.
Google Sheets “Explore” feature.
Handout from Georgetown U – Types of charts
A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
What is Chartjunk? Tufte Explains (good reading assignment)
Google Fusion Tables, spreadsheet charts, pivot tables, all available in Google Drive–https://support.google.com/drive/#topic=2799627
Silk– https://silk.co –create interactive databases for people to explore
Datavisual– https://datavisu.al –create charts and graphs with multiple datasets
Polychart– https://www.polychart.com –easy drag/drop interface for charts, requires download
Plotly– https://plot.ly –has it’s own API and accepts a wide variety of data formats including MATLAB
Datawrapper – https://datawrapper.de –open source tool for creating simple, attractive charts
Video Collection for Students
Gestalt Principles
Edward Tufte Lecture
David McCandless TED Talk
Royal Statistical Society
UAF Instructional Designers
This page has been authored collectively by the experts on the
UAF Instructional Design Team.
Let us know if you have suggestions or corrections!
