mvuorre / dataviz

A data visualization workshop

Data visualization workshop

What: PhD Data visualization workshop
When: 2023-11-20 @ 13.30 - 17.00
Where: S8
Who: Matti Vuorre (instructor), y'all
Why: What makes a good graph? In this workshop, we try to sketch an answer to this question, and then use what we learned in making our own figures that intrigue, inform, and impress.

Materials

• Slides: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pmX2hldtLY7S69b_S2C6iFq0Syw1mRbo
• Shared notebook: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rnW8eEtkrUAJOop_PZr5udigzpKddlk3x5C26xvuZxc
• Grab a copy of the code and play with it in the cloud: https://posit.cloud/content/7071123
• Download slides from GitHub

Program

We will talk about theoretical approaches to data communication and how to apply them in practice.

Theory

• A round of greetings
  • Tell everyone who you are and why you are here
• Group exercise 1
  • Please form small groups (2-4) and take a few minutes each to tell other group members what kind of quantitative information you would like to display, how, and why.
  • If possible, share existing or work-in-progress figures with your group.
• Lecture 1
  • Theories / concepts underlying effective data visualization.
• Group exercise 2
  • Do you find the concepts discussed useful for your own visualization goals? How? If not, why not? Discuss in your group.

Practice

• Lecture 2
  • Introduction to the grammar of graphics and its implementation in R
• Group exercise 3
  • Work on your figures and discuss them with others in your group.
• Wrap-up

Credits & further reading

Image sources and credits are in slide notes.

Theory

• The Royal Statistical Society's "Best Practices in Data Visualization" guide: Repository & website.
• European Commission's data visualization guide.
• From data to viz, "a classification of chart types based on input data format".

Practice

• https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/

• https://r4ds.hadley.nz/data-visualize.html (Chapters 1 & 9-11)

• Cédric Scherer's ggplot2-focused workshop: Repository & website.

• https://github.com/cxli233/FriendsDontLetFriends

• https://youtu.be/fSgEeI2Xpdc