AP CSP: Making Visualizations & Discovering a Data Story

Recap: Be aware of your assumptions when analyzing data It is a good idea to call out explicitly your assumptions and think critically about what assumptions other people are making when they interpret data. Visualizations are very important when trying to communicate information Choosing the right way to visualize data is essential to communicating your ideas. Certain chart types are right for certain situations, depending on the data Read “Data Visualization 101: How to design charts and graphs” for tips http://content.visage.co/hs-fs/hub/424038/file-2094950163-pdf

Introduction: Do you have to use a computer to create a data visualization? What are some reasons that you need to use a computer to manipulate data? Taking data from its raw state to the point where you can create a meaningful visualization involves several steps. Today we’re going to use visualization in attempt to discover things in the data we might not otherwise see.

Make a Quick Visualization: On some survey 2,000 people were asked, “What do you do when you’re bored?”. Here are the most common responses by age group. Try to make a visual, graphical explanation of this data. Try to communicate something through drawing while staying true to the data.

Practice Visualization: In this exercise what was challenging? What kinds of things were visually effective at communicating information?

Create Visuals on Code Studio: Now we are going to experiment in making different types of charts using Google Sheets Before we can begin, everyone must have a Gmail account so they can use Google Sheets Create one now if you don’t have one Go to Unit 2 Stage 11 Start at “Downloading the Data Set” and complete up to part 8

Goals: The point here is not to make the prettiest chart, but choose the chart type that makes the most sense for the data you’ve got and the story you’re trying to tell. Remember  finding “no correlation” or “no relationship” is actually just as interesting as finding a strong correlation or relationship. Don’t worry about making the perfect chart! Learn some skills to create good visualizations

Importance of Creating Visualizations: Data in its raw form is simply too big to be able to look at and derive any meaning. Even when organized in a table data can be hard to interpret When organized correctly and presented as a clear and concise visual data can be better understood Developing techniques to create good visualizations is an skill that requires knowledge of some techniques within applications that can visualize data. As we did using Google Sheets

Finding Stories within our Data: Now that we have learned some visualization techniques, we are going to apply those skills and interpret some raw data on our own in hopes to discover a connection or trend. First we are going to take about 5 minutes to poke around 1 of the data sets provided to us. Readme File Raw Data Set ; CSV File Summary Table Data Sets ; CSV File Learn about the data you can work with and explore some summary tables

Creating a Visual using a Data Set: With your partner explore the datasets and choose one you’d like to discover more about. Complete the Activity Guide Pick a dataset Use visualization tools to “discover a data story” Remember an interesting” finding doesn’t necessarily mean finding something world- changing or mind-blowing. Simply making a clear chart that gives some kind of view into the data is interesting You may want to refer to “Visualization 101” The link is on the second slide

Share your Visualizations: Show the visualization you created Explain what it shows. Explain the possible story it tells.

Lesson Summary: Creating visualizations is a skill that takes practice and experience with different visual tools. You have to be creative in terms of highlighting certain sets of data when creating your visualization to get the story the data is showing. How did you find what the data was showing? Describe the difficulties and/or opportunities you encountered along the way

Explore Task: Basic Overview including Requirements You need to submit a computational artifact and written responses

Explore Task Requirements: