Today:
~20-30 min of lecture/programming
~1.5-2 hr of finishing-up-viz work
~0.5-1 hr of viz party
Warm-Up Activity
- What is the visualization trying to show?
- What are its methods?
- What are the strengths / weaknesses?
http://old.vijayp.ca/blog/2012/06/colours-in-movie-posters-since-1914/
Today
- Communication with an Audience (Viz for self, peers, others)
- 3D Movies
- Where to go from here
- D3.js
- Idyll
- Final project - putting on your finishing touches
Three Classes of Visualizations
- Viz for Self
- Viz for Experts
- Viz for the Public
Viz for Self
There are no rules!
Viz for Self
Viz for Self
name of: L25n512TNG_shenplot_STARS_ylimn0p5_bins_largeEu_1e2_nx050_ny050_sn099.png
Viz for Self
Later this became (viz for peers)
Viz for Self
Let's talk about exploration.
- What are characteristics of data that would influence how you visualize it?
- What information do you have that would be visually interesting?
- What information do you not have that you need to understand the importance of the data?
Example: A banking database where each record is a bank transaction and the fields include date, deposit or withdrawal amount, customer id, and the interest rate of the account.
Viz for Self
Let's talk about exploration.
- What are characteristics of data that would influence how you visualize it?
- What information do you have that would be visually interesting?
- What information do you not have that you need to understand the importance of the data?
Example: A spreadsheet of experimental crop growth measurements where each record is a measurement, and the fields include date, plant species, plant id number, number of leaves, plant height, number of internodes, and average leaf length.
Viz for Self
Let's talk about exploration.
- What are characteristics of data that would influence how you visualize it?
- What information do you have that would be visually interesting?
- What information do you not have that you need to understand the importance of the data?
Example: A computational simulation of a galaxy where each record is a timestep in the evolution of the 3D grid, and the fields include time, X position, Y position, Z position, gas density, gas temperature, gas metallicity, and number of stars.
Viz for Self
What do you want to get out of visualization for yourself?
- Do you want to find meaning?
- Do you want to understand how to guide further visualizations?
- Is the story you want to tell already known to you?
- What shortcuts can you take?
Viz for Experts
To design a visualization for experts, you need to analyze how they process information.
- What do they know?
- What conventions will they assume?
- Are they able to fill in the blanks of information?
Viz for Experts
Viz for Experts
Viz for Experts
Viz for Experts
Viz for Experts
Viz for Experts
Experts often want to interrogate the data themselves.
How can they do that?
- Linked Dashboards
- Side-by-side comparison plots
- Text annotation with specific values listed
- Color bar annotation
Viz for Experts
Experts are looking to isolate variables to make scientific conclusions.
How can we make visualizations more analytical?
- Reduce the dimensionality of the image (slices)
- Viewpoint from "outside the box"
- Extremely high contrast color choices (or highlight different features)
Viz for the Public
This is what you're most accustomed to, because usually YOU are the public.
Jargon
Jaret before and after from Alan Alda Center on Vimeo.
Jargon
Definition: Special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.
Jargon
Jargon
Storytelling
Let's just get it out there: humans don't respond to data. They respond to stories.
Which of these do you care about more?
- Global average atmospheric carbon dioxide is 405 ppm.
- Polar bears are dying because the ice they use to hunt is melting.
Storytelling
Why is that?
Storytelling
Freytag's Pyramid
Storytelling
Characters and Conflict
- People as subjects: Two political candidates are battling for office
- People as researchers: Dr. Smith is trying to cure cancer
- Objects as characters: The photons are trying to push their way to the sun's surface
Know your Audience
Know your Audience
What do you know about them?
- Age
- Nationality
- Occupation
- Affiliation with a Special Interest / Organization
- Or is it literally EVERYBODY (web publishing)
Visualization for the Public
Images can be more powerful than words, text, and numbers. Images can tell stories.
Visualization for the Public
Context is vital for the public.
- Embed multiple datasets
- Place something familiar to relate to the unfamiliar
- Smooth transitions so you can see where you've come from and where you're going to
Visualization for the Public
Context is vital for the public.
Visualization for the Public
Identifying the narrative
- Do you first find data, or first find a story?
- What is the difference between the data narrative and a narrative for the public?
Visualization for the Public
- Aesthetics Matter
- Interactivity should not have any lag or latency
- Relative values are often more important than specific values
- Limit the amount of text/reading
- Limit the amount of information being packed in
Visualization for the Public
3D interactive movies
Where to go from here
Info viz: Idyll
A web-based toolkit for storytelling with data visualizations!
- Reduce manual coding for interactive articles
- Integration with D3.js
Also check out: https://jnaiman.github.io/
Info viz: D3.js
A JavaScript library for web-based data visualization
- Declarative, not imperative (this is better for web coding)
- Dynamic and interactive
- Smooth transitions
Info/sci viz: Vaex
- opensource components, check out docs page for large point datasets
Sci viz: Glue
- linked data views for scientific data (astro emphasis)
- includes starting 3D exploration tools
Sci viz: yt
- for scientific data, heavy emphasis on astro
- Comes with many example datasets you can grab on the sample data hub
Courses & Special effects software (shameless self promotion)
- UIUC's Data Viz course - IS590DVO
- Scientific Data in Houdini - ytini
- Blender for Scientific Data - AstroBlend
The Things I Want You To Take Away
- Coding is not magic, and neither is astrophysics
- Numerical solutions are only so precise, but we can measure their inaccuracy
- There are a variety of methods and codes to use for numerical science
- There are a variety of systems, tools, and ecosystems available for visualizing data
- How not to lie with data viz (and how to detect when someone is lying to you!)
- How to share scientific results online with data viz tools
Viz Party
Prepare your "elevator speech" - in a few sentences:
- What are you modeling (what system? What initial conditions?)
- What are the interesting things you noticed about your system (it has lots of planets, it is very stable/unstable, it has planets of many sizes, ...)
- Why you made the viz choices you did (textures, sizes, etc)
- What you'd like to do if you have more time
Reminder: Teaching philosophy
- Non-competative, group learning environment
- There are no "lone wolfs" in science - Path to Newton
- More info here: https://predictionx.org/path_to_newton
- Inquiry based approach to learning - basically, we are actually going to do some computational astrophysics!
the end of the class will be the opportunity for you all to show off your cool viz! don't worry if its not done yet - one of the skills you can learn here is how to articulate what you'd like to do in the future if you had time!