Course Announcement

 

cs5984: Information Visualization

Instructor:  Dr. Chris North

CRN: 96297 (counts towards 6xxx requirement)

Fall, 2001

Tues,Thurs 11am – 12:15 

McBryde 322

 

 

 

The Information Revolution is upon us.  Virtual mountains of information are piling up and threatening to bury us.  Yet this valuable information hides in computer storage, where it is intangible, invisible, unknowable, and unusable.  When we seek it, we are overwhelmed with a core dump of data that we cannot possibly digest.  Have you ever wished you could somehow “see” inside your computer, to grasp information that it refused to show you?  Have you ever been frustrated by the enormous effort you must exert (Click, click, click, click, click, type, type, type…) to obtain information you needed?  Have you ever wondered how to increase the bandwidth of effective communication between computer and human, enabling us to see more, learn more, understand more, and accomplish more?  If so, then take cs5984, Information Visualization, and open your eyes to a new world where the invisible is visible.

 

In this course, you will learn how to:

• Examine existing interactive visualization techniques from the research literature and tools from the trade;
• Design information visualizations for given data, users, and tasks;
• Prototype and implement visualizations and supporting algorithms and data structures;
• Experimentally evaluate visualizations with empirical user studies.

 

Course text book:  Information Visualization, Robert Spence, ACM Press and Addison-Wesley, 2001, ISBN 0-201-59626-1.

 

Course web page:  dude.cs.vt.edu/cs5984/