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

There are two variables depicted in the graph, one is ‘Psychosocial maturation’ and the other one is ‘Menarche’. The graph uses both horizontal and vertical scales to denote the age range and the type of psychosocial maturity. The linear graph represents the trend in ‘Endocrinology & Metabolism’ over a period of time.

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

The graph represnts an uptrend for both ‘Psychosocial maturation’ and ‘Menarche’ variables from 20,000 - 200 years ago. On the contrary, in the present year the gap has increased between the two variables due to social complexity and nutritional overload. The graph types and cues utilized to represnt the relationship between the two variables is clear, but based on my understanding, a better color pallet could have been used to depict the scale of age range. As a viewer, it seems difficult to get the accurate age within the respective trend.

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

Single variable (sales of cigarette brand in billions) is being depicted in the graph. The color of the bar represents a cigarette brand and the length of the bar represents the sales of the respective brand in billions of dollars.

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

The graph shows a clear difference in the sales of different cigarette brands. The only issue I see in the graph is the color used to represent the brands ‘Marlboro’ and ‘Winston’. Using a similar color could be confusing, so a different color should be used to represent different brands.

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”).
knitr::include_graphics("ba_plot.jpeg")

#This graph clearly depicts the underlying idea about the data that is being visualized. Based on the numbers provided in the graph, a user can analyze if the ad campaign is doing well or not.
  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”).
knitr::include_graphics("3dbar.png")

#In this graph, it is really tough to identify the percentage of each and every graph. To further make it difficult to interpret, few of the bars are hidden behind the other bars. Overall, this data visualization is not an easy one to comprehend and interpret in a glance and might take some time to get an idea about the data represented in the graph. To improve the graph, we could divide it into two graphs (2-dimensional graphs) to demonstrate the relationship between all the three variables, rather than using a 3-D graph.

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: On first glance, the color theme used for the presentation clearly highlights the data and provides a clear picture of the primary theme of the topic. The introductory definition used in the beginning might be a bit theoretical for the readers and somewhat doesn’t blends in with the overall theme of the presentation. Overall, the author has used a good selection of visuals but to further improve the presentation I would have used a linking mechanism to provide the viewers an idea about the numbers represented in the graphs and the relationship between the graphs used in the presentation.

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: Based on the graphs, I would say that the details are well highlighted in the blog/presentation. The data is well structured and distributed by clearly highlighting the states and cities, but in some of the cases the color palette used is hard to distinguish on such a large scale. Apart from that, I would have used a less number of visuals as it might confuse the reader and pivot from the main theme of the presentation.