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Data Visualization

Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS)  
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS)  
Columbia University

Course Details

Course: QMSS G4063 Spring 2015
Lecture: MW 1:10pm-2:25pm at 313 Fayerweather
Office Hours: W 2:30pm-3:30pm at IAB 270C

Instructor

Elliot Cohen, Ph.D.
Lecturer in the Department of Statistics
Columbia University

Learning Objectives

... and resources to help you get there

Detailed Syllabus

Subject to change. Syllabus will be updated periodically throughout the semester based on progress assessments and student learning outcomes.

  • Jan. 21 (W): Welcome! Introduction, context and history of Data Viz. Review syllabus and course resources.

  • Jan. 26 (M): Anscombe's Quartet. Statistical graphics. Visual model diagnostics.

  • Jan. 28 (W): R tutorial.

  • Feb. 02 (M): Quiz 1 (Tufte and Wilkinson Ch. 1-3). From Wilkinson's grammar of graphics to implementation with Hadley's ggplot2.

  • Feb. 04 (W): Meet your computer. Git and github tutorial.

  • Feb. 09 (M): Guest Lecture Michael Malecki - Data Maps. Reading due today: value-by-alpha maps & more on value-by-alpha maps

  • Feb. 11 (W): Guest Lecture Swupnil Sahai - Tableau.

  • Feb. 16 (M): Time Series: The Climate Hockey Stick (IPCC). WSJ and NYT Business Section graphics. gapminder

  • Feb. 18 (W): Handling time series in R with date() and POSIX() objects. In-class assignment: Handling geophysical time series -- example from wind energy analysis.

  • Feb. 23 (M):

    • Quiz 2.
    • Quiz 2 review.
    • Project status updates.
    • Narrative Graphics of Space and Time: Minard's narrative of Napoleon's Failed Conquest of Russia. NYT Ebola Graphics. Ornithology and botany field guides.
    • Reading due today: Tufte chapters 4-9. Wilkinson chapters 4-7 (you can skim ch. 5).
    • HW2 due Monday Mar. 2nd: Re-Create Minard's Napolean Conquest or Ebola/contagion graphic in R.

  • Feb. 25 (W): R and git.

    • R to the next level (review):
      • Split-Apply-Combine with Hadley's plyr.
      • Reshape data with reshape2.
      • Create the expected data structure for ggplot.
    • git to the next level (new):

  • Mar. 02 (M): HW2 due today! Project status updates due today! In class: scripting, debugging and writing functions in R.

  • Mar. 04 (W): Peer code review of HW2 (30min). Time to work on projects (45min). Elliot at conference in Portugal; Hueiyi will be available for questions.

  • Mar. 09 (M): Cartography and Choropleths with sp, rMaps, maps, maptools and other R libraries.

      install.packages(c("sp", "maps", "maptools", "reshape", "deldir"))
  require(devtools)
  install.packages("base64enc")
  install_github('ramnathv/rCharts@dev')
  install_github('ramnathv/rMaps')

  • Mar. 11 (W): DOM

  • Mar. 16 (M): Spring Break

  • Mar. 18 (W): Spring Break

  • Mar. 23 (M): Colors! Semantically resonant colors. Color scales. Color pallettes. HEX.

  • Mar. 25 (W): Document Object Model (DOM) part I & II

    • Prerequisites
      • command line essentials & more
      • text editors (TextEdit, Sublime Text, BBEdit, Chocolat, Atom and many more)
      • file paths (hint: no spaces)
      • local server python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8888
    • HTML & CSS.

  • Mar. 30 (M): Document Object Model (DOM) part III

    • JavaScript.
    • Reading due today (YES READ BOTH):
      • Data Viz w. D3.js Cookbook (Zhu) Ch. 4-6: scales, axes, transitions.
      • Interactive Data Viz for the Web (Murray) Ch. 7-9: scales, axes, transitions.

  • Apr. 01 (W): Putting together the DOM with JsFiddle, Plunkr or local server.

  • Apr. 06 (M): D3 part I: setup, selections and data.

  • Apr. 08 (W): D3 practice

  • Apr. 13 (M): D3 part II: scales, axes, transitions.

    • Reading due today:

  • Apr. 15 (W): Build a webpage on github.io

  • Apr. 20 (M): Exam! Covers all topics since Spring Break.

    • Reading due today (YES READ BOTH):
      • Data Viz w. D3.js Cookbook (Zhu) Ch. 10: Interactivity.
      • Interactive Data Viz for the Web (Murray) Ch. 10: Interactivity.
      • Study!

  • Apr. 22 (W): TBD

  • Apr. 27 (M): Revisiting sage advice from Edward Tufte: Corruption in Evidence Presentation - Effects without causes. Actions without actors. Passive voice as obfuscation. - Cherry-picking, overreaching, the rage to conclude. - Chartjunk strikes back! - Why PowerPoint insults your audience's intelligence.

  • Apr. 29 (W): First FULL draft of conference paper due! Instructor review. - In class introduce new data-viz libraries for R: dygraphs, plotly and leaflet.

  • May 04 (M): First FULL draft of project website due! Peer code review.

  • May 11 (M): FINAL EXAM (1:10-4:00pm): Present final project: conference paper with accompanying web-based visualizations.