CSC2537/STA2555

Winter 2024

        Information Visualization


Instructor : Carolina Nobre (Send Email)
                        Office hours by appointment
Class: Tuesdays, 9am - 11am MY 320


Purpose

Visual perception...

This course will study techniques and algorithms for creating effective visualizations based on principles from graphic design, visual art, perceptual psychology, and cognitive science. The course is targeted both towards students interested in using visualization in their own work, as well as students interested in building better visualization tools and systems. Students will conduct reading of scientific research papers. A final project will make‐up most of the grade (60%), while student presentation skills and in readings will also be emphasized.

... evaluation.

... applications

... visualization techniques

... data models

Course schedule

This is a tentative schedule, that is subject to change over the course of the term.

Date Topic Readings / Assignments
9 Jan. L1: Introduction (no readings)
16 Jan. L2: Paper Critique Pre-class preparation: Readings will be posted on Quercus.
23 Jan. L3: Fundamentals of visualization Low-Level Components of Analytic Activity in Information Visualization (Amar et al., 2005)
The Eyes Have It A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualization (Schneiderman, 1996)
27 Jan. ASSIGNMENT Draw me a visualization...
30 Jan. L4: Visualization research A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation (Munzner, 2009)
Visualization as Seen Through its Research Paper Keywords (Isenberg et al., 2017)
6 Feb . L5: Exploratory Data Analysis Voyager: Exploratory Analysis via Faceted Browsing of Visualization Recommendations (Wongsuphasawat et al., 2016)
FlowSense: A Natural Language Interface for Visual Data Exploration within a Dataflow System (Yu and Silva, 2019)
13 Feb. PROJECT ASSIGNMENT Project abstract due
20 Feb. READING WEEK: No class
27 Feb. L7: Visual Analytics A Survey of Visual Analytics Techniques for Machine Learning (Yuan et al., 2020)
There Is No Spoon: Evaluating Performance, Space Use, and Presence with Expert Domain Users... (Batch et al., 2020)
5 Mar. L8: Graphs & Networks Juniper: A Tree+Table Approach to Multivariate Graph Visualization (Nobre et al., 2018)
NodeTrix: A Hybrid Visualization of Social Networks (Henry et al., 2007)
. PROJECT ASSIGNMENT Project video due
. PROJECT ASSIGNMENT Peer-feedback on project video due
. L9: Communicating Scientific Results Putting scientific results in perspective: Improving the communication of standardized effect sizes (Kim et al, 2022)
The Meta-Analytic Rain Cloud Plot: A New Approach to Visualizing Clearinghouse Data (Fitzgerald and Tipton, 2022)
. L10: Understanding the viewer A principled way of assessing visualization literacy (Boy et al., 2014)
Error Bars Considered Harmful: Exploring Alternate Encodings for Mean and Error (Correll & Gleicher, 2014)
. L11: Project discussion In-class project discussion (breakout rooms)
. PROJECT ASSIGNMENT Pre-recorded presentation video due
. L12: Project Presentations (Q&A) no readings
. PROJECT ASSIGNMENT Project report due

Grading Scheme

Draw me a visualization 10%
(design + written rationale)
Thematic Papers
(5 assignments)
6% per assignment
(essay + in-class discussion)
Project Abstract 5%
Mid-term Video Presentation 15%
Peer Feedback on Video Presentation 5%
Project Presentation 15%
Project Report 20%