by gleicher on January 4, 2012
You may be looking for the Course Announcement or the Basic Info page.
We will use Piazza as the discussion platform for this class. (at least initially as an experiment)
Most of the discussion aspects of the class should be done on Piazza (which is why commenting is turned off on these pages).
by gleicher on February 7, 2012
Some announcements:
- I realize there is a problem that you have 2 places to look for course information (Piazza and the web page). For now, I have no good answer, but I will try to put pointers from one onto the other.
- We will not have an optional Friday session this week, while I try to think of ways to make them more valuable. Because of this, I am giving everyone a no-cost extension to the design challenge until Sunday, February 12th. There is a bunch of readings due on Monday, so you might not want to wait.
- I have clarified the expectations about discussion of design ideas for the design challenge. In particular, the “online discussion phase” is Monday and Tuesday (before Wednesday).
I am in the process of doing a little class mechanics re-design to try to make things run more smoothly, and give you more advanced warning about when things are going to happen.
by gleicher on February 4, 2012
This week, we’ll do some more “perspective” readings, start to think about how to come up with designs, and then start trying to do some designs.
- Monday, February 6th – Reading 3: Why Visualization? – some perspectives on why we’re doing this (rather than some other way of dealing with data/communication), that will hopefully give us ideas on how to best meet those goals.
- Wednesday, February 8th – Reading 4: Think Differently! – a case study of where someone challenged the assumptions of how to present information, hopefully leading to some thinking about how (and when) to come up with novel ideas.
- Friday, February 10th – The first design challenge is due! (note: handing in the design challenge is not optional – even if class Friday is).
(optional) Friday, February 10th – We may or may not have an optional, informal class discussion. Please give me some feedback in the poll on Piazza. We will not have an optional session on Friday, Feb 10th.
by gleicher on January 29, 2012
This week we’ll have a bit of an overview of the whole class to get a sense of where we’re going and the various perspectives we’ll look at the topics through.
Hopefully, the set of people will stabilize. We’ll stick with the initial class mechanics before trying to improve them (I appreciate the suggestions people have already made – some I’m trying to figure out how to implement).
Remember, for each day, the reading/assignment is due before that day. When I get up early in the morning, I will look at them so I can try to make use of them in class.
- Monday, January 30th – Reading Assignment 2M is due, to enable us to have a discussion about “What is visualization?” Hopefully this will let us get at the many different perspectives on the topics we’re going to see.
- Wednesday, February 1st – Reading Assignment 2W is due – which will basically give you the whole course in a nutshell. The class time will be an overview of the various kinds of things we’ll be learning more about. The idea is to give us enough basic vocabulary that we can start digging into stuff more deeply.
- Friday, February 3 – Assignment 2 is due. Whether or not you plan on coming to the optional class meeting.
- Friday, February 3 – (optional) Class time will be a “problems pot-luck” – bring a data interpretation problem to pass around. The hope here is to get some ideas as to the kinds of data people care about (since so many of us are coming from different domains). To the extent possible, we’ll make use of the Assignment 2 responses to give ourselves something to look at. This will be a little better structured than the 1st optional meeting, I promise!
by gleicher on January 20, 2012
There is a lot of initial content on the website here. Normally, it would trickle out, so I would have it all come as news. However, for the first week, I’ve chosen to have things organized (in BasicInfo, Assignments&Readings, …), and make this single post to remind you what you are supposed to be doing.
- For Monday, January 23rd: First day of class! Be sure to come! Look over the website beforehand. Read through the BasicInfo, at least.
- For Wednesday, January 25th: Assignments 0 and 1 due (well before class time). Class discussion about the reading. Part of the assignment is to read over the website and get started with Piazza. And make sure to do the reading (including commenting on it!)
- For Friday, January 27th: An optional class exercise. Basically, it’s a time to get to know one another with no real plan.
- For Monday, January 30th: Reading assignment 2M is due. Class discussion about different perspectives on visualization.
- For Wednesday, February 1st: Reading assignment 2W is due. Class discussion is an overview of visualization.
- For Friday, February 3rd: another optional (experimental) gathering: a “problems pot-luck” where people will be encouraged to talk about this visualization problems that most interest them.
- For Friday, February 3rd: There might be a “written” assignment due. Still TBD.
After these first two weeks, we should have a better idea who is in the class, so we can get into a more regular groove. I have a rough plan for how I see the semester proceeding (see the Syllabus).
