Seek and Find Assignment Rules

by Mike Gleicher on August 12, 2017

Each week, there will be a seek and find assignment.

Due: There will be a seek and find each week of the class (15 in total). They are due on Fridays. The assignments will remain open for one week after the due date to allow for late assignments and for discussion. The first week there is a little extra leniency in the due dates; the last week there is a little less.

Assessment: Assignments will be scored on the 3/2/1/0 scale. A good assignment will include a valid picture and link, and a brief answer to the question. If you don’t include all the “requirements” (a picture, a link, and answer) or your responses don’t fit the question (e.g., the visualization you picked doesn’t meet the requirements) your assignment may be marked incomplete.

While discussion of seek and finds is not required, it is recommended. At the end of the semester, when we try to give grades, we will look at the quantity and quality of discussion contributions.

Turning it in: There will be a “discussion” on Canvas that you can post to for each assignment. Make sure to include your picture and a link, and your answer to the question. Looking at other people’s postings (and discussing them) is recommended, but not required.

Late Policy: Late assignments will be accepted, subject to the class Late Policy. Turning something in late is better than turning in nothing (but you can’t turn things in after the assignment closes). At the end of the semester, we will look at your consistency: if you were a few hours late once or twice, it won’t matter. If you were consistently late, you may be penalized.

Learning Objectives (why are you doing this): We want you to see how the concepts we discuss in class appear in the “real world.” We want you to see real examples and see how visualization, and visualization concepts are done. We want you to have examples to discuss and critique.

What you need to do:

For this assignment you must bring us a …. (data) visualization!

(sorry, this is a reference to an old Monty Python movie – if you don’t know the reference, that line won’t be funny. Even if you do know the reference, it might not be funny).

Each week, we will ask you to bring us a visualization (we will have these seek and find assignments every week). There will usually be some specification of what you need to find. We might ask for a certain kind of data, or an example of the use of a specific technique.

The seek and find ground rules.

  • It cannot be a visualization that you (or someone in class) made.
  • It must be publicly available.
  • You must be able to provide an image.
  • If it’s on a web page, you should copy a picture (either use a screen shot or copy the image). Please shrink the image to a reasonable size, if it’s too small for people to see the detail, they’ll be able to get it from the link you give.  Post your image on Canvas following these instructions.
  • Try to find something interesting (to you at least)
  • There may be other rules added

Create a posting and include a picture of the visualization. If you found the visualization on the web, provide a link to the page that it is on (if it’s hard to find on that page, give some clues like “on page 4 of https://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Papers/2015/AG15/Submission-FINAL-7-27-2015.pdf“). If you scanned it or photograph it, describe where you got it from (scanned from p7 of January 6th Capital Times).

Try to pick something that you don’t think anyone else will pick. Even though you can peek and see what others are posting, someone might post at the same time as you, so try to avoid redundancy although this isn’t a strict rule.

You are welcome to discuss other people’s submissions (you are allowed to comment on canvas). Discussion is not required. However, students often find it interesting to look at what everyone else has turned in, and to discuss by replying to the postings.

Because a discussion with 50+ people can become unwieldy, we divide the class in half.

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