Directions

In this chapter we discussed why well-designed data graphics are important and we described a taxonomy for understanding their composition.

The objective of this assignment is for you to understand what characteristics you can use to develop a great data graphic.

Each question is worth 5 points.

To submit this homework you will create the document in Rstudio, using the knitr package (button included in Rstudio) and then submit the document to your Rpubs account. Once uploaded you will submit the link to that document on Canvas. Please make sure that this link is hyper linked and that I can see the visualization and the code required to create it.

Question #1

Answer the following questions for this graphic Relationship between ages and psychosocial maturity

  1. Identify the visual cues, coordinate system, and scale(s)

  1. Coordinate system: Cartesian (x,y).

  2. Visual cues: Length, Color, Position, Direction(slope).

  3. Scales: Numeric - Linear.

  1. How many variables are depicted in the graph? Explicitly link each variable to a visual cue that you listed above.

  1. Two variables: Time and Age (Menarche and Psychosocial Maturity).

  2. Age: length, color, position of the bar.

  3. Color to distinguish Menarche and Psychosocial Maturity.

  4. Time: Bar trend and position.

  1. Critique this data graphic using the taxonomy described in the lecture.

The good use of visual cues helps to distinguish or show relationship of menarche and psychosocial maturity. Showing there is mismatch between menarche and psychosocial in the present time. There are missing x-axis labes. The bar color (light green and pink text color) appear too loud.

Question #2

Answer the following questions for this graphic World’s top 10 best selling cigarette brands 2004-2007

  1. Identify the visual cues, coordinate system, and scale(s)

  1. Coordinate system: Cartesian (x,y)

  2. Visual cues: Length and Color

  3. Scale: Linear numeric (x) and Categorical(y) for Cigarette Brands

  1. How many variables are depicted in the graph? Explicitly link each variable to a visual cue that you listed above.

  1. Two variables: Cigarette Brands and Sales in billions.

  2. The length of the bars showing amount of sales in billions.

  3. The color of the bars showing cigarette brands.

  1. Critique this data graphic using the taxonomy described in the lecture.

The good use of visual cues helps to show Cigarette Brands and sales in billions, color cues showing top selling cigarette brand. The title and x-axis label gives a clear context of the purpose of the data graphics to make meaningful comparison.

Question #3

Find two data graphics published in a newspaper on on the internet in the last two years.

  1. Identify a graphical display that you find compelling. What aspects of the display work well, and how do these relate to the principles that we have just gone over in lecture. Include a screenshot of the display along with your solution (Hint:use the following in a code chunk: knitr::include_graphics(“your_graphic”).

I find this data graphics compelling as it uses visual cues, coordinate system and scale. Context is provided by the axis labels and title. Color is being used as a visual cue

knitr::include_graphics("good.PNG")

  1. Identify a graphical display that you find less compelling. What aspects of the display don’t work well? Are there ways that the display might be improved? Include a screenshot of the display along with your solution (Hint:use the following in a code chunk: knitr::include_graphics(“your_graphic”).

Visually appealing, can include labels, and title.

knitr::include_graphics("bad.PNG")

Question #4

Briefly (one paragraph) critique the designer’s choices. Would you have made different choices? Why or why not? Note: Link contains a collection of many data graphics, and I don’t expect (or want) you to write a full report on each individual graphic. But each collection shares some common stylistic elements. You should comment on a few things that you notice about the design of the collection.

What is a Data Scientist

Answer:

The use of visual cues and color makes it easy to read and show the difference between the different segment. The use of color and the color selection was appropriate for the graphic data I was able to see the different categories and delineate between them. The writer leveraged the sizes to depict the difference. This made it easy to depict at a glance. Overall, it is a ready write-up with good visual cues.

Question #5

Briefly (one paragraph) critique the designer’s choices. Would you have made different choices? Why or why not? Note: Link contains a collection of many data graphics, and I don’t expect (or want) you to write a full report on each individual graphic. But each collection shares some common stylistic elements. You should comment on a few things that you notice about the design of the collection.

Charts that explain food in America

Answer:

The writer used graphical system to show how the food industry has changed throughout the years. There were 40 data visualizations that have different coordinate system; despite this, all had clear visual cues to show each data points in the graphics. Overall, good visual cues, great labels for the axis and title. At first glance, it was easy to read an understand the context of the graphics.