Directions

In this chapter we discussed wy 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)

visual cues: Position, Length, Direction, shape

Cartesian: History is X axis, Age is Y axis

Scale: Time

The scale of X axis is 20,000 years ago to present, the scale of Y axis is range from 5 to 25.

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

2 variables in 4 pairs 20,000 years ago: Length(Menarche and Psychosocial maturation are different)

2,000 years ago: Position(the variables are in different position compared to 20,000 years ago)

200 years ago: direction(the shape looks wider compared to the previous variables, and the direction is slightly going up)

present: the color shows the difference between Menarche and Psychosocial maturation Menarche-green color Psychosocial maturation-red color

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

The graph shows the age in terms of history times from 20,000 years ago to present. By differentiating the Menarche and Psychosocial maturation, we can see the mismatch between these 2 variables during the years. Especially the present, there is a huge mismatch between Menarche and Psychosocial maturation. By the use of different color, position, length, direction, position, the graph gives us an overview of ages of Menarche and Psychosocial maturation in different times

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) visual cues: color, length

coordinate system: Cartesian X axis is Sales, Y axis is Brands

Scale: Linear

  1. How many variables are depicted in the graph? Explicitly link each variable to a visual cue that you listed above. Ten variables(10 brands):
  1. Critique this data graphic using the taxonomy described in the lecture. The graph shows the top 10 brands and corresponding sales in different color and length. By showing the top 10 brands in different color, we can tell that Marlboro performs much better than the other 9 brands, which has approximately $470 billion in sales during 2004-2007.

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 it compelling because the visual cues use colors, length to tell how factors impact when employees consider a change in working environment. It uses Cartesian in the coordinator system, X axis refers to percentage of respondents, and Y axis refers to different factors. The scale shows percentage. It categories the factors into 4 reasons: Compensation, Meaning, Confidence, and Autonomy and use 4 different colors for each. We can see from the graphs that Compensation impacts the most among the factors which occupies 71% of respondents, and Autonomy takes the least of factors: 50% and 47% of respondents for the respective specific factor.

  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”).

This graph shows hows how young adults, ages 15 to 24 years old, and adults, ages 40 or older, responded to the question: “Do you think the world is becoming a better or worse place with each generation?” I find this graph is less compelling because it only shows the going up tendency but it does not explain variables in coordinate system. The scale only shows the percentage but it is difficult for us to tell the percentage and their corresponding countries from the graph.

If let me edit/improve the graph, I will divide the countries into 2 kinds of categories: developed countries and developing countries(or based on other metric if it tells better). and then use histogram instead of just plots to show which country has the highest percentage. So that people can tell the percentage from the graph easily. Also I will use color to differentiate the different ages: 15~24-year-old and 40+ years old, which help audience to tell young people has more positive attitude to this question compared to older people.

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 graphs shows the overview of data scientists look like. However, it does not give us a clear picture of different features of data scientists.

  1. I will change the color of analyse to highlight the strengths and weakness. For example, for the 1st graph over the next 5 years, demands for data scientists will: for the larger percentage, I will keep the blue color, but for the less percentage, I will choose red color instead. By using different colors, people can tell easily which has more impacts/percentages than the other ones.

  2. I will compare different categories at one time instead of put it in different layouts. For example, for the last graph, I will use a histogram to lay all the categories(Acquiring new data sets, Parsing data sets, Filtering and organizing data…) in pairs to show the percentage of each categories so that audience will tell which category have higher percentage than the other ones. Also, I will use different colors to differentiate each category so that it is more efficient to tell a story.

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: This page gives us a bad example of telling a less compelling story by using too many visual cues(colors). There are too many colorful maps which make readers overwhelmed and confused, and they cannot get the emphasized information from the graphs.

If I could make changes to this page, I will organize the information and divide into categories and only show certain colors: for example, for the different crops and animals, instead of showing all the crops types by using changing of colors, I would only chose the top3, or top1 to show where the crops get planted. And for the animals, I will divide into 2 categories: Livestock includes cows, pigs, sheep and goats, and Fowl includes chicken and turkey. By this way, audience will not get overwhelmed by the too much information and they can tell from the maps that what kind of animals/ crops populate where.