Getting started with Python & PlotDevice
Of the many scripting languages in popular use, Python has a reputation for ease-of-learning and power that few others can match. This week's reading assignment is designed to give you a sense of the language's syntax and how it might be applied to the creation of data graphics using PlotDevice.
Getting Started
Environment
Primitives
Variables
Strings
Collections
Serialization
By Joel Achenbach
We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition.
Some even have doubts about the moon landing.
read at nationalgeographic.com
By Ben Fry
The ability to collect, store, and manage data is increasing quickly, but our ability to understand it remains constant. In an attempt to gain better understanding of data, fields such as information visualization, data mining and graphic design are employed, each solving an isolated part of the specific problem, but failing in a broader sense: there are too many unsolved problems in the visualization of complex data. As a solution, this dissertation proposes that the individual fields be brought together as part of a singular process titled Computational Information Design.
→ read chapter 3 (pp. 33–50) of his dissertation
By Richard Saul Wurman
The principle of the five hat racks suggests that there are a limited number of ways information can be organized. As you can guess by the name, it says there are exactly 5 ways to organize information, those 5 ways being by Location, by Alphabet, by Time, by Category, and by Continuum.
Read Steven Bradley’s concise summary of RSW’s approach to information architecture in his blog post Organizing Information.
Then go back to the source and read this excerpt from Information Anxiety: [pdf].
Rather than submitting discussion questions, bring in a collection of a dozen or more images (along with the metadata corresponding to the LATCH attributes) describing a group of related items in your life. Good choices include books/movies/music, the contents of your fridge or nightstand, art supplies, etc.
In next week’s class, we’ll be assembling different taxonomies from your collections using the various ‘hat rack’ axes.
By Jacob Harris
All of this has made me wonder what other approaches people have used to anchor their graphics in empathy. I investigated a few techniques that data journalists have used to connect readers with the dots. These aren’t just specific to tragedies like war and disaster, they’re important for any datasets we are using to report data about from people or that affects people (i.e., pretty much every dataset).
read the essay here
By Robert Simmon
The use of color to display data is a solved problem, right? Just pick a palette from a drop-down menu (probably either a grayscale ramp or a rainbow), set start and end points, press “apply,” and you’re done. Although we all know it’s not that simple, that’s often how colors are chosen in the real world. As a result, many visualizations fail to represent the underlying data as well as they could.
By Kieran Healy and James Moody
Visualizing data is central to social scientific work. Despite a promising early beginning, sociology has lagged in the use of visual tools. We review the history and current state of visualization in sociology. Using examples throughout, we discuss recent developments in ways of seeing raw data and presenting the results of statistical modeling. We make a general distinction between those methods and tools designed to help explore data sets and those designed to help present results to others. We argue that recent advances should be seen as part of a broader shift toward easier sharing of code and data both between researchers and with wider publics, and we encourage practitioners and publishers to work toward a higher and more consistent standard for the graphical display of sociological insights.
PDF available here