DATA 311 - Lab 3: Visualization

Overview

This pre-lab and lab serve to give hands-on experience with visualizations in matplotlib and seaborn.

Submission and Development Environment

Details for submission and development environment are the same as for Lab 1, except that both the lab and pre-lab are to be done individually; please see the Lab 1 handout if you need a refresher. As a reminder, if you choose to use Google Colab or any other alternative notebook hosting service, you must disable any built-in generative AI features.

Submit your Pre-Lab answers as a PDF to the Pre-Lab 3 assignment on Canvas. Submit your lab solutions as lab3.ipynb to the Lab 3 assignment on Canvas.

Collaboration Policy

For this assignment, both the pre-lab and lab are to be done individually. As a reminder of the collaboration policy on the syllabus, discussing ideas and approaches with your classmates away from computers is acceptable and encouraged; sharing or viewing code is prohibited.

Pre-Lab

In an editor of your choice that is capable of exporting to pdf, please provide your responses to the following.

• For each of the six principles of good visual design, search online and find one good and one bad example of the principle.

  • The six principles are:

    1. Maximize the data-ink ratio

    2. Minimize the “Lie" factor

    3. Minimize “chartjunk"

    4. Use scales and labeling well

    5. Use color and shading well

    6. Use repetition well

  • You can search for good or bad visualizations via search engines.

  • These are some notable collections of bad visualizations:

    • viz.wtf/

    • badvisualisations.tumblr.com

• What to include in your response:

  • For each of the 12 examples, include the image, the url you got it from, the principle it relates to, and 1-3 sentences explaining why it is a good example or violation of the associated principle.

Lab

Download lab3.ipynb, upload it to JupyterHub, and complete the lab by following the instructions in the notebook. Any work not completed during lab time must be completed by the deadline.

Rubric

Pre-Lab (12 points)

• 2 points per principle (12 points total)

Lab (52 points)

• 1-8: 2 points each
• 9-12: 4 points each
• 13-18: 4 points each

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Brian Hutchinson and Aaron Tuor for iterating on prior versions of this lab.