Presentation for VITTA Conference 2010

1. INFORMATION IS BEAUTIFUL
VITTA Conference 2010
Session 2320
Margaret Lawson

2. About Me
 Teaching since 1994
 IT/Humanities background
 Contributing authors to “Information
Technology Unit 1 and 2” Cengage
 DataVisualisation Chapter 5

3. What am I talking about?
2011 Unit 2 study design, Area of Study 1
 Defining “DataVisualisation”
 Study design requirements
 What do we mean by “big databases”
 How can we teach this to our kids?
 Possible Project ideas

4. “A better experience through
good design”
goincase.com

5. The love affair …
© 1999 http://www.peacockmaps.com/

6.  Atlas of Cyberspace:
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/
m.dodge/cybergeography//atlas/atlas.html
 An old web site
 Feb 2004
 Artistic
 Conceptual
 Geographical Maps

7. Obsession with analytics

8. What is Data Visualisation
 boring data -> compelling visualisation
 Example:
 List of late students
 Visualisation = greater meaning

9. Background
 EdwardTufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/)
 Statistician
 expert in the presentation of informational
graphics such as charts and diagrams

10. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/nymag

11. Understanding the Study
Design
 DataVisualisation
 Knowledge
 Types
 Purpose
 Suitability
 Needs of Users
 Evaluating
 Skills
 Create effective data visualisation

13. http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

15. Types
 “Your data is meant for action”
 Juice Analytics
http://www.juiceanalytics.com/chartchooser/
 Comparing data
 Distribution of data
 Relationships between two data sets
 Composition of data

16. Chart Chooser

17. Purpose
 Comparing data
 ‘Where is the web traffic coming from?’Australia or
USA -> Pie Chart
 Distribution of data
 ‘When are people accessing the web site?’ Morning or
night? -> ColumnChart
 Relationships between two data sets
 ‘Hits on the blog vs. Sales on online store’
 -> Scatter Chart
 Composition of data
 How does the data change over time?

18. The Whitburn Project
 120 years of chart history in the US
 Spreadsheet of 37,000 songs and 112 columns
of raw data
 Relationship between song duration and
length of stay in chart
 http://waxy.org/2008/05/the_whitburn_projec
t/

20. 21 Mb file available through text book web site

21. Compare frequency of word use using wordle.net

22. Suitability
 Choose appropriate data for visualisation
 Students access big databases, understand
what the data is telling them and then choose
what they need to use.

23. Sites you should visit
 Australian Bureau of statistics
 http://www.abs.gov.au/
 OECD
 http://www.oecd.org/
 Google Public Data
 http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory

24. Implementing the Outcome
 Problem to be solved
 Kids accessing authentic data from large data
repositories
 Local vs. global problems
 Presenting key aspects of the data in a visual
form back to the client/user
 Suitability of data chosen
 Suitability of Data visualisation chosen

25. Possible examples
 Students have to visualise data to aid in
decision making
 Sponsorship of Child
 Which country is in need of your money?
 Where should the soccer world cup go?
 Which country would benefit economically by the
decision?

26. Example from the book
 Your school has sponsored a child in Sudan
 needs to choose another sponsor child
 Produce a series of data visualisations that
would assist them with their decision.
1. Identify three potential sponsorship children
2. Use big databases (http://data.worldbank.org/)
to choose suitable information about Health and
Education
3. Perhaps compare with Australian data
4. Present a compelling presentation

27. Tools for Data visualisation
 MS Excel
 Simple charts
 Many Eyes
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manye
yes/
 Google chart
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/docs/galle
ry/chart_gall.html

29. Research
 7 things you should know about Data visualisation
http://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbo
utDataV/162091
 16 Awesome Data visualisation tools
http://mashable.com/2007/05/15/16-awesome-data-
visualization-tools/
 40 essential tools to visualise data
http://flowingdata.com/2008/10/20/40-essential-tools-and-
resources-to-visualize-data/
 Open Flash Chart
http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart/
 28 rich DataVisualisationTools
http://insideria.com/2009/12/28-rich-data-visualization-
too.html

30. Contact me
 Margaret Lawson
 mlawson@stmichaels.vic.edu.au
St. Michael’s Grammar School
(on leave throughout 2011)
 margaret.lawson@konstantkaos.net