Data Visualization

Data visualization is a cutting edge field, and we can find it all around us – from news and magazines to scientific reports and crowd-sourced trends, info-graphics are used to tell us about the world in compelling and easy-to-understand ways. In this class, we will take a data set found in social media feeds and turn it into an info-graphic that conveys the information in an interesting and even interactive manner. If you are interested in learning to code in a creative way, or making dynamic graphics that tell stories, then you've found the right class! This field brings together creativity and analysis, relating to a wide variety of fields: computer science, journalism, design, statistics, graphic arts, network analysis, mapping, geo-locative design, scientific visualization and program writing. In addition to covering data visualization, this is an excellent class to learn about programming. We will be working within the programming environment called Processing. Because of the ease of use of the software, this class will get you visualizing information in no time. Initially, we will use a data set that is made available to the students, but you will get the opportunity to mine data online to create informational representations in various forms. This course is designed for students with some or no programming experience. Students can use student-led surveys, sports statistics, news and current events feeds, data from Twitter, Facebook and social media to gather data that they then learn to parse and filter and create a design to represent that information in a visual format. This representation can be further refined and interactivity can be added.

Course Number: COMP-90026   Credit: 3 units