CS171 Schedule 2012
Comments or questions for the required readings must be posted before Monday of the week when the readings are listed in the schedule. For more details consult the syllabus.
NEW: Please use MIT's NotaBene to directly annotate the PDFs of the reading assignments with your comments and questions. You can sign up to the CS171 shared NotaBene using this link.
CS171 Activity Handout 2012
Act I: Foundations
Week 1 (Jan 23-27)
Readings (recommended):
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Edward Tufte. 1997.
- Non-designer's Design Book. Robin Williams. 1994.
Week 2 (Jan 30-Feb 3)
Readings by Jan 30
- Tamara Munzner, Chapter 1
- Colin Ware, Chapter 1
- Recommended:
- Useful Junk? The Effects of Visual Embellishment on Comprehension and Memorability of Charts. Scott Bateman, Regan L. Mandryk, Carl Gutwin, Aaron Genest, David McDine, Christopher Brooks. Proceedings of CHI '10, pp. 2573-2582, Apr 2010.
- The Chartjunk Debate. A Close Examination of Recent Findings. Critique of Bateman's argument by Stephen Few, 2011.
- Crowdsourcing Graphical Perception: Using Mechanical Turk to Assess Visualization Design. Jeffrey Heer, Michael Bostock. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 203–212, 2010.
Week 3 (Feb 6-10)
Readings by Feb 6
- Tamara Munzner, Chapter 2
- Colin Ware, Chapters 2 + 3
- Recommended:
- Low-Level Components of Analytic Activity in Information Visualization. Robert Amar, James Eagan, and John Stasko. IEEE InfoVis 2005
- "Sketching: The Visual Thinking Power Tool" by M. Rhode
Tu: Tasks and Interaction [slides]
Task Taxonomy. Task Abstraction. Interaction Principles.
Task Taxonomy. Task Abstraction. Interaction Principles.
Fr: Sketching Workshop I
with Nathan Cook, MIT
with Nathan Cook, MIT
- HW2 due
- HW3 out
Th: Perception [slides]
Bottom Up vs. Top Down. The Eye. Things that Pop. Contours & Textures. Gestalt Principles.
Bottom Up vs. Top Down. The Eye. Things that Pop. Contours & Textures. Gestalt Principles.
- Popout demo / Perception in Visualization by Christopher Healey
- The Physiology of the Senses by Tutis Villis
Week 4 (Feb 13-17)
Readings by Feb 13
- Tamara Munzner, Chapters 3-4
- Colin Ware, Chapters 4-6
- Recommended:
- A Tour through the Visualization Zoo. Jeffrey Heer, Michael Bostock, Vadim Ogievetsky. Communications of the ACM, 53(6), pp. 59-67, Jun 2010.
Tu: Visual Encodings [slides]
Bertin's taxonomy. Basic chart types.
Bertin's taxonomy. Basic chart types.
Fr: Sketching Workshop II
with Nathan Cook, MIT
with Nathan Cook, MIT
- HW 3 due
- HW 4 out
Th: Color [slides]
Color Processing. Color Spaces. Color Design.
Color Processing. Color Spaces. Color Design.
- The Color Game
- Overview of Color Vision
- Color Vision and Art
- The von Bezold Spreading Effect (aka The Paint Chip Problem)
- Color Brewer
Act II: Methods
Week 5 (Feb 20-24)
Readings by Feb 20
- Tamara Munzner, Chapters 5-6
- Colin Ware, Chapters 7-8
Tu: Single-View Methods [slides]
Spatial Position. Color. Layering. Glyphs.
Spatial Position. Color. Layering. Glyphs.
Fr: Processing Lab
- Projects: Teams Formed
- HW4 due
- HW5 out
Th: Multiple-View Methods [slides]
Linked Views. Multiple Views. Spatial Ordering of Views.
Linked Views. Multiple Views. Spatial Ordering of Views.
Week 6 (Feb 27-Mar 2)
Readings by Feb 27
Tu: Item Reduction [slides]
Filtering. Navigation and Zooming. Aggregation. Overviews. Focus+Context.
Filtering. Navigation and Zooming. Aggregation. Overviews. Focus+Context.
Fr: Data Reduction
- Projects: Project Proposals Due
- HW5 due
- HW6 out
Th: Attribute Reduction [slides]
Slicing and Cutting. Projection. Attribute Filtering and Aggregation. Dimensionality Reduction. Displaying Low-Dimensional Spaces.
Slicing and Cutting. Projection. Attribute Filtering and Aggregation. Dimensionality Reduction. Displaying Low-Dimensional Spaces.
Week 7 (Mar 5-9)
Tu: Project Proposal Feedback (no lecture)
Fr: Project Proposal Feedback (no lab)
- Projects: Proposal Feedback Week
- HW6 due
- HW7 out
Week 8 (Mar 12-16)
No Class, Spring Break
Act III: Techniques
Week 9 (Mar 19-23)
Tu: Statistical Graphs [slides]
Aspect Ratio. Multiscale Banking to 45 Degrees. Scales. Nominal Comparisons. Percentage and Proportion Data. Scatter Plots. Box & Whisker Plots
Aspect Ratio. Multiscale Banking to 45 Degrees. Scales. Nominal Comparisons. Percentage and Proportion Data. Scatter Plots. Box & Whisker Plots
Fr: MapLab
with David Jacopille
with David Jacopille
- HW7 due
- HW8 out
Th: Maps Google Maps. Map Projections. Cartograms. Choropleth Maps. Proportional Symbol Maps. Flow Maps. Real-Time Maps. Thematic Maps. [slides]
Week 10 (Mar 26-Mar 30)
Tu: Trees & Networks Definitions. Visualizing Trees. Visualizing Networks. [slides]
Fr: Storytelling Lab
- Projects: Project Updates Due
- HW8 due
- HW9 out
Th: Text & Images [slides] Vis Techniques. Parallel Coordinates. Glyphs. Dimensionality Reduction. MDS. PCA.
Week 11 (Apr 2-6)
Tu: Project Feedback (no lecture)
Fr: Project Feedback (no lab)
- Projects: Project Feedback Week
- HW9 due
Th: Wrap Up & Outlook Final Lecture.
Act III: Applications
Week 12 (Apr 9-13)
Tu: Visualization and the Arts (Ben Fry)
Fr: Research Talks: The Connectome
Verena Kaynig and Amelio Vazquez
Verena Kaynig and Amelio Vazquez
Th: Social Visualization (Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg, Google)
Week 13 (Apr 16-20)
Tu: Visualization in Biology (Janet Iwasa, HMS)
Fr: Research Talks: AstroMed
Michelle Borkin
Michelle Borkin
- Projects: Projects Due
Th: Communicating with Visualizations (Bang Wong, Broad Institute)
Week 14 (Apr 23-27)
Tu: Project Presentations I
Fr: No Lab
- Projects: Web Sites Due
Th: Project Presentations II