Reading 1: Getting Started

by Mike Gleicher on January 15, 2017

Since this is the first reading for the first, week, it is a little unusual. A lot of the goal here is to get you used to the ways we do readings in class – how we’ll distribute documents to read, how readings are connected to discussion assignments, etc.

Please read all the listed readings before class on Friday, January 20th.

Because not everyone will be aware of the reading before class (part of the assignment is to learn how we will make you aware of readings), and because not everyone will be enrolled in time, we will be a little more lenient with the due date on this one.

The readings:

  1. The course web. Look around, look at the policies pages and other rants. You might also have a look over the previous year’s web (since this year will be a lot like the previous year).
  2. The “frontmatter” (preface) of the Munzner textbook. This is valuable since it explains the philosophy behind the book (which matches the philosophy of the course pretty well). We want to make sure you can find things in the protected reader, so I am not giving you more instructions. You can figure it out from University library or in the protected reader.
  3. Stephen Few. Data Visualization for Human Perception. (online article at interaction.org). This is a nice overview article that will give you a sense of a lot of the topics in this class.
  4. The first 2 chapters of Alberto Cairo’s “The Functional Art”. (see what I have to say about Cairo’s books here) You can access these readings in the course reader here.

You’ll be asked to discuss these readings in Discussion 1.

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