Assignment 1: Visualization Design
Due: Monday Jan 13, 2020 by noon
In this assignment, you will design a visualization for a small data set and provide a rigorous rationale for your design choices. You should in theory be ready to explain the contribution of every pixel in the display. You are free to use any graphics or charting tool you please–including drafting it by hand. However, you may find it most instructive to create the chart from scratch using a graphics tool of your choice.
Data: Coterminal Computer Science Master's Degrees at Stanford
Stanford Institutional Research and Decision Support collects a variety of data about the educational programs at Stanford. We have extracted and prepared a small data set about the the number of students who have pursued coterminal Master’s degrees in Computer Science between 2014 and 2019. Our data set contains the following information:
Number of records: 112
Variable Names:
Completion Year: Year in which the coterminal degrees were completed.
Coterm Master’s Plan: Name of Master’s degree student completed.
Coterm Undergraduate Plan: Name of Undergraduate degree student completed.
Number of Completions: Num. of students that completed the corresponding (Master’s, Undergraduate) coterminal degree plan.
The extracted dataset is available in csv format: StanfordCSCotermPlans_2014-1029.csv
Assignment
Your task is to download this data and design a static (i.e., single image) visualization that you believe effectively communicates one aspect of the data and provide a short write-up (no more than 4 paragraphs) describing your design. Start by choosing a question you’d like your visualization to answer. Design your visualization to answer that question, and use the question as the title of your graphic.
While you must use the data set given, you are free to filter, transform and augment the data as you see fit. Such transformations may include (but are not limited to) log transformation, computing percentages or averages, grouping elements into new categories, or removing data that are not relevant to your driving question. You are also free to incorporate external data as you see fit. Your chart should be interpretable without recourse to your short write-up. Do not forget to include title, axis labels or legends as needed!
In your write-up, you should provide a rigorous rationale for your design decisions and explain whereever possible how your design decisions. Document the visual encodings you used and why they are appropriate for the data. These decisions include the choice of visualization type, size, color, scale, and other visual elements, as well as the use of sorting or other data transformations. How do these decisions facilitate effective communication of the answer to your question?
Please include a short list of the tools you used to create the visualization.
Grading
The assignment score is out of a maximum of 10 points. Historically, the median score on this assignment has been about 8.5 which corresponds to an A-. We will determine scores by judging both the soundness of your design and the quality of the write-up. We will also look for consideration of audience, message and intended task. Here are some aspects that may lead to point deductions.
- Use of misleading, unnecessary or unmotivated graphic elements.
- Missing chart title, axis labels, or data transformation descriptions.
- Missing or incomplete design rationale in write-up.
- Inappropriate data or data transformations for answering your question (e.g. question cannot be addressed by the data shown).
- Ineffective encodings for conveying the data relevant to your question (e.g. distracting colors, improper data transformation).
We will reward entries that go above and beyond the assignment requirements to produce effective graphics. Examples may include outstanding visual design, meaningful incorporation of external data to reveal important trends, demonstrating exceptional creativity, or effective annotations or other narrative devices.
Submission Details
This is an individual assignment. You may not work in groups. Your completed assignment is due on Monday Jan 13, 2020 by noon . We will be discussing submissions in class, so be sure to avoid a late submission!
Make sure to size your images so that they fit within a reasonable window size on a laptop screen (i.e. images should be 600-800 pixels wide) and that the text is readable at that size.
To submit your assignment, prepare a PDF containing your image and short description with filename: A1-FirstnameLastname.PDF