From CS 294-10 Visualization Sp10

lec 2 - Data and Image Models

Contents 1 The eyes have it, Schneiderman. (html) 2 Chapter 1: Graphical Excellence, In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte. 3 Chapter 2: Graphical Integrity, In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte. 4 Chapter 3: Sources of Graphical Integrity, In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte. 5 The structure of the information visualization design space. Card & Mackinlay. (ieee)(Google Scholar sources) 6 Optional Readings 6.1 On the theory of scales of measurement. Stevens. (jstor) (duke.edu)

The eyes have it, Schneiderman. (html)

• ahh, mid-90s techno-utopianism, how I miss you. I Know, Let's Have A Mantra!
• dude, same friggin dichotomy as in the 1st Card reading - scientific or abstract. No others, no middle ground, etc.
• "type by task taxonomy (TTT) of information visualizations" taxonomy and I are not friends.
• "all seven data types (1-, 2-, 3-dimensional data, temporal and multi-dimensional data, and tree and network data)" Yeah, I never use anything else either.
• "The seven tasks are... Overview... Zoom... Filter... Details-on-demand... Relate... History... Extract" wait, how is history a task?
• how about set notation? algorithms? (ok fine, procedural would be temporal - how about functional?) Policy?
• "This taxonomy is useful only if it facilitates discussion and leads to useful discoveries." I really appreciate that this was written down.
• the discussion on boolean logic is so quaint - it's the world before google! before map-reduce! before the mass popularization of SQL even!
• in general reading this was like a blast from the past, and everything about the writing was so certain that this was gonna be the way the world would be. Turns out it's half right, half wrong, and half so everyday common-sense as to be unimportant (i mean of *course* we're gonna zoom in to see detail!). I realize this is 3 halves, sadly.

Chapter 1: Graphical Excellence, In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte.

• more basics
• p51 - "principles of graphical excellence" - the heart of the book, one page summary.

Chapter 2: Graphical Integrity, In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte.

• "lie factor = size of effect shown in graphic / size of effect in data" - brilliant, and with examples of graphs designed to be "interesting" almost all using iconic representation
• design and data variation - usually seems to be case of bucketing not using equal buckets but pretending not to, or rescaling certain areas

Chapter 3: Sources of Graphical Integrity, In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Tufte.

• Relational data: Can You Do It?
• p84 "A comparison between these data and Table 1 suggests that most news publications outside of Japan operate at a pre-adult level of intelligence in graphical design." LOL

The structure of the information visualization design space. Card & Mackinlay. (ieee)(Google Scholar sources)

Optional Readings

On the theory of scales of measurement. Stevens. (jstor) (duke.edu)

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