Posted In: Hands-on activities

Hands-on Activity on What is Data?

So, I have learned more about data this week than I have in my whole life. I am still learning and do not feel like I have fully grasped everything yet. With that being said, I believe that these visualizations use both scalar and compound types of data.

Team Member Cards: I could not decide on a data visualization from the catalog to best describe this one. I would say that it first uses list compound data then when you select a card I would consider it to use dictionary compound data. I say this because at first, you see a list of names then when you click on the name you are able to see more information such as their photo, position, phone number, location, and main role. I think this is a semi-effective data visualization because it gets the information across in a concise way but I don’t love it when you click on one name the others disappear making it slightly confusing for an average user.

The Demographics of Others: I would say that this visualization most resembles a heatmap because of its layout however it is using each square to represent a percentage of a whole. I think they are using text scalars through the entire visualization. It is interactive making it incredibly effective and appealing to the user because you can generate whatever information most interests you. However, it took me a moment to fully grasp how to use it but once I did I spent so much time on it.

“Based on a True Story”: I think this visualization most resembles a stacked bar graph or Marimekko chart. This is definitely the best and my favorite visualization of the three because it is very clear with what information is being presented. They use what I assume to be a boolean with the color-coding to represent true, true-ish, false-ish, false, and unknowns. Once you click on a spot you are able to see an ordered list of different timestamps in the movie. You also see dictionary compound data in the form of movie information vs. real information. This visualization took so much time and is the most effective and one that I will definitely be coming back to use because it is so interesting!