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

a. Identify the visual cues, coordinate system, and scale(s)
  • Visual cues: Length, Color, Position, Direction(slope)
  • Coordinate system: Cartesian (x,y)
  • Scale: Linear numeric (y) and backward logarithmic numeric (x) starting from 20,000 to 0 (Present).
c. Critique this data graphic using the taxonomy described in the lecture.
  • Visual cues: length, color, position and direction are great visual cues to show the relationship of Menarche age and Psychosocial Maturity age in each era.
  • Coordinate systems: Cartesian coordinate system is appropriate in this case.
  • Scale: this graphic uses logarithm numeric scale on x-axis which is good to cover a large range of values.
  • context: the graphic clearly shows the purpose of the data. However, the title should be on the top of the graphic, missing x-axis label, and the use of light green and pink text color is too flashy and difficult to read.

Question #2

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

a. Identify the visual cues, coordinate system, and scale(s)
  • Visual cues: Length and Color
  • Coordinate system: Cartesian (x,y)
  • Scale: Linear numeric (x) and Categorical(y) for Cigarette Brands
c. Critique this data graphic using the taxonomy described in the lecture.
  • Visual cues: length is a great visual cue for comparing sales in billions of each cigarette brand, color in the graphic is well selected.
  • Coordinate systems: Cartesian coordinate system is appropriate in this case.
  • Scale: this graphic creator used sale scale in billions to reduce the number digits, and used $50 billion interval.
  • context: the context is clear, understandable, and easy to compare sale of each cigarette brand.

Question #3

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

a. 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”).

Data Graphic 1

Source: Monkeypox cases are on the decline in New York City, data shows

  • In terms of visual cues, I like that the creator used length of the bars to represent NYC Monkeypox cases each day and have another line to represent 7-day rolling average to analyze the trend of this disease. The context and color using also clear and easy to understand.
Data Graphic 2
b. 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”).

Source: The World’s Shark Attack Hotspots

  • This graphic is great in terms of presenting the top 8 locations (countries) that has the most numbers of confirmed unprovoked shark attacks by location. The aspect that I think can be improved or changed is the color of each bar should be different to clearly represent each location. Also, the creator can use pie or donut chart instead of bar chart, and present information as percentage instead of numbers for each location.

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: I like the color palette using in this info graphic and the variety of visual cues to interest the readers to the data that creator want to present. However, I don’t like the monochromatic color scheme as it use only a single blue color with varying shades. I would prefer using other color schemes to contrast the 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: I like the way many creators use the map of the USA to present the food related data based on each area. However, some graphics are very difficult to understand the context or purpose of the creator. This can be improved by ensure that the title is clear and properly label the use of color and position of the visual cues.