“A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words” – Fred R. Barnard
In the modern world, data has become more and more critical. The book Homo Deus by historian Yuval Noah Harari explains the emergence of a new religion in which the information flow has supreme value. This resource guide will focus on tools, ethics, and best practices in visualization in this big-data era.
1. “How Charts Lie” by Alberto Cairo
Alberto Cairo wrote a book in 2019 about how charts could easily mislead one who interprets them. The book starts with an introduction (Cairo, 2019) to the 2016 US election map hung in the White House by Former President Donald Trump. The map was supposed to deliver the information “Who won where?” but it was interpreted as “What number of the population voted for each candidate?”. He gives multiple similar examples and makes the readers understand to be more cautious while seeing a chart or a map. This book focuses on eliminating the gap in persuasive visualization based on an IEEE Paper released in 2014 named “The Persuasive Power of Data Visualization” (Pandey, 2014).
I think it is essential to discuss the unseen traps created by the misuse of visualization tools in this data-driven world. The above resource could be a step for bringing awareness to the students.
Note: The book is not freely available online. However, the first chapter is available on amazon.com (inside the book) (Cairo, 2019. pp. 3-15). A free video on a conference presentation by the author is available on YouTube (Cairo, 2019).
References
[1] Cairo, A. (2019) How charts lie
[2] Cairo, A. (2019, December 4) How charts lie by Alberto Cairo, Big Things Conference, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX74Nge8Wkw
[3] Pandey, A. V., Manivannan, A., Nov, O., Satterthwaite, M., & Bertini, E. (2014). The Persuasive Power of Data Visualization. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(12), 2211–2220. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2014.2346419
2. “The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte
In this book, Tufte explains some best practice principles that could be followed while using visualization tools. Some principles he discusses are Data-Ink Ratio, Chart Junk, and Lie Factor (Tufte, 2007). In the data-ink ratio, he tells the readers to minimize the ink used to draw the
charts, in other words, to make the chart minimalist so that it delivers more information than distracting graphics. Char Junk is unwanted graphical information added to the graph that might lead to a misinterpretation. More examples and illustrations are provided in the 2010 ACM Conference Paper Useful junk?: the effects of visual embellishment on comprehension and memorability of charts (Scott, 2010). Finally, Tufte explains the proportion of disinformation in the carts using thelie factor.
I chose this material to deliver the need for standards in using visualization tools. People who use digital tools to create graphs in this fast-connected world have the potential to misinform the audience. So, we must have a standard that could regulate this spread.
References
[1] Tufte, Edward R, (2007) The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information, Second Edition, Graphic Press LLC,
http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~jtanderson/teaching/cosc311/fa21/files/tufte.pdf
[2] Scott Bateman, Regan L. Mandryk, Carl Gutwin, Aaron Genest, David McDine, and Christopher Brooks. 2010. Useful junk? the effects of visual embellishment on comprehension and memorability of charts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2573–2582. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753716
Some of the latest libraries and frameworks used in the visualization and analysis are provided below:
3. rayshader: Create Maps and Visualize Data in 2D and 3D
Rayshader is open-source R programming-based visualization tool for 2D and 3D (Morgan-Wall T, 2023). We can model contour plots and 3D geographic terrain, including sunlight shading and clouds, which will help in different simulation projects. The official website includes
documentation and examples (Morgan-Wall T, 2023). As a motivation, some of the social media posts are included in the reference (Kaninghat, 2023).
In my opinion, we must explore new open-source tools that could help visualize and help in simulations. Rayshader could be used to predict floods, and improve rainwater harvesting, (based on social media posts) can be used to see the rise of pandemics in certain areas, and so on.
Providing information on the tools that exist could help save the world.
References
[1] Morgan-Wall T (2023). rayshader: Create Maps and Visualize Data in 2D and 3D. https://www.rayshader.com, https://github.com/tylermorganwall/rayshader, https://www.rayshader.com/
[2] Kaninghat, Sreeganesh (2023) LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sreeganesh-k_population-activity-701713459224766054
4-Z2q0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
[3] terence fosstodon (2022, December 11), Twitter https://twitter.com/researchremora/status/1601927385586204673?=Ird8q18WnNM9Q7AAxjyVbQ&s=19
4. OSMnx: New Methods for Acquiring, Constructing, Analyzing, and Visualizing Complex Street Networks.
OSMnx is an open-source python package to visualize real-world street networks (Boeing, 2017). Automated driving may become common, and we may be developing cities and planning new ways to connect two places. So it would be essential to know about these kinds of packages. Some trending images on social media developed using the tools are available in the reference
(Sanket, 2023) (Souktik, 2023). Can also get more examples by searching “OSMnx” on Linkedin.
I believe these types of tools could become a method to store memories about cities and places. Could even model historical civilization sites for learning. In collaboration with UNESCO, researchers are trying to digitize cultural heritage sites and museums in Ukraine (Aisling, 2023). So encouraging these types of activities worldwide could help preserve history in the advent of any catastrophe.
References
[1] Boeing, G. (2017). “OSMnx: New Methods for Acquiring, Constructing, Analyzing, and Visualizing Complex Street Networks.” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. 65, 126-139. doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2017.05.004
[2] Aisling Ní Chúláin, (2023, January 22) euronews.next. https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/22/ukraine-is-racing-to-3d-scan-its-monuments-in-case-theyre-bombed-in-the-war-and-need-resto
[3] Sanket Ghumra, (2022) OSMnx Linkedin, https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7014019727731625984?updateEntit
yUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7014019727731625984%29
[4] Ar. Souktik B, (2023), OSMnx Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7030491396453117952?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7030491396453117952%29
