After completing this assignment, students should be able to:
Conventions for data visualization:
After doing a sociological analysis, Helen Kennedy and coauthors determined that four conventions of data visualization reinforce people’s perceptions of its factual basis: (1) two-dimensional viewpoints, (2) clean layouts, (3) geometric shapes and lines, and (4) the inclusion of data sources at the bottom. These conventions contribute to the perception of data visualization as objective, scientific, and neutral. (p. 82)
Emotion in data visualization:
It is important to note that emotion and visual minimalism are not incompatible here; the Periscopic visualization shows us how emotion can be leveraged alongside visual minimalism for maximal effect. (p. 84)
Uncertainty (HUGE idea):
As it turns out, visceralizing data may help designers solve one particularly pernicious problem in the visualization community: how to represent uncertainty in a medium that’s become rhetorically synonymous with the truth. (p. 88)
Respond to the following prompts in a single R Markdown document (.Rmd). Use section headers (#) to separate one response from another.
In one paragraph, discuss the role that emotion plays in data visualization, in the context of both best practices in data visualization and data feminism.
In one paragraph, reflect on your own feelings about objectivity in data analysis.
Render your R Markdown document as HTML. Submit your HTML file to Moodle by Tuesday at 11:59 pm ET.
| Criteria | Zero | One |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Quality | Incomplete or missing submission. Student did not make an earnest effort to complete the assignment. Formatting errors make the submission unreadable. | Student accurately summarizes the content of the reading. Student’s reflection is thoughtful and genuine. |