cs5764: Information Visualization

Homework #1:  Visualization Tools

The goal of this homework is to experience and practice the use of visualization tools, accustom yourself to seeing data in new ways, discover something new in a data set, and think critically about visualizations.

Your assignment is to find some interesting data, explore it using some visualization tools, and write a short report.  This is an individual assignment.

Data:  Find some data of interest to you.  The data should be large and complex enough that visualization is needed.  It should have at least 500 items and at least 5 attributes.  Here are some data ideas:

Visualization:  Now, examine your data using Microsoft Excel and any 2 of the visualization tools below.  Each tool has documentation about its data format and user manual. Each tool is also described by papers in the reading list. Excel is helpful for manipulating your data into the right format.  The visualization tools are installed on the machines in McBryde 104c, and some are downloadable for free. The tools you may choose from are:

Report:  Write a 2 page report (2 page maximum!) about your data findings and about the visualization tools you used.  You should specifically answer these 3 questions:

  1. What is your data?  e.g. what is it about, what are the attributes (columns), how many rows & columns.  Very brief!
  2. Data findings:  List 3 interesting, non-trivial findings in your data.  e.g. Did you find answers to any questions you had about the data?  What relationships exist in the data?  Anything surprising?   You must convince me of your findings.  Use pictures to show your claims (e.g. screenshots of visualizations -- Alt-PrintScrn captures a screenshot that can be pasted into word processors).
  3. Compare and critique:  List 4 key non-trivial differences between the tools.  e.g. Which visualizations enabled you answer which questions better and why?  What are the strengths, weaknesses, tradeoffs between the tools?  e.g. scalability in rows and columns.  Focus your comparison on the primary visualization techniques themselves, not the other details of the user interfaces of these specific implementations.  This section is important and should take apx a full page.

What to hand in:

Access: