Truth, beauty, and data + R and tidyverse
Readings
- The syllabus, content, lessons, examples, and assignments pages for this class
- Tim Harford, “Florence Nightingale: Data Viz Pioneer,” 99% Invisible, episode 433, March 2, 2021 (this is a podcast; listen to it in your browser or use an app like Overcast or Spotify)
- Chapter 1 in Kieran Healy, Data Visualization1
- Chapters 2 and 3 in Alberto Cairo, The Truthful Art2 (skim the introduction and chapter 1)
- Study: Charts change hearts and minds better than words do
Questions to reflect on
(Remember, you don’t need to answer all of these—or even any of them! These are just here to help guide your thinking.)
- How do we know what is true?
- Are facts truth?
- Why do we visualize data?
- What makes a great visualization?
- How do you choose which kind of visualization to use?
Slides
The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.
View all slides in new window Download PDF of all slides
Fun fact: If you type ? (or shift + /) while going through the slides, you can see a list of special slide-specific commands.
Videos
Videos for each section of the lecture are available at this YouTube playlist.
- Introduction
- Facts, truth, and beauty
- Data, truth, and beauty
- Beautiful visualizations
- Class details
You can also watch the playlist (and skip around to different sections) here:
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Kieran Healy, Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), http://socviz.co/. ↩︎
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Alberto Cairo, The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication (Berkeley, California: New Riders, 2016). ↩︎