Finding Trends with Visualizations UNIT 2 – LESSON 8 Finding Trends with Visualizations

VOCABULARY ALERT: TRENDS: A general direction in which something is developing or changing GOOGLE TRENDS: is an online search tool that allows the user to see how often specific keywords, subjects and phrases have been queried over a specific period of time. 

FIRST: GO INTO GOOGLE CLASSROOM AND ANSWER THE SURVEY FOUND THERE.

The two main purposes of this lesson are: Navigating and using a real data tool (Google Trends, see below) that is external to the course Getting acquainted with talking and writing about data. In particular we want to: Draw a distinction between describing what the data shows and describing why it might be that way In other words: describe connections and trends in data separate from drawing conclusions. You will get in the habit of separating the what from the why when it comes to talking and writing about data

You will be able to: Use Google Trends to identify and explore connections and patterns within a data visualization. Accurately describe what a data visualization of a trend is showing. Provide plausible explanations of trends and patterns observed within a data visualization.

Yesterday we started to collect data about ourselves so that we could learn about trends and patterns in our behavior. Today we’re going to look at another tool that has collected a lot more data about you, me, and everyone else in this room. We’re going to start thinking about how to tell stories with data, what data we need, and how best to use and present it.

Activity Guide - Exploring Trends - Activity Guide

Search trends are used in a variety of fields in order to understand what topics are most popular across the country and world. Search trends are also powerful predictors. Medical professionals may use this information to trace an outbreak of the flu. Businesses, media outlets, and advertisers keep a close eye on trending topics in order to understand how potential customers are thinking.

The fact that a global "conversation" is now happening online and computational tools exist to capture and visualize that conversation enables entirely new ways of identifying, understanding, and predicting patterns in culture and society at large.

Note: The front page of Google Trends shows a collection of stories compiled by others. To actually use the tool yourself, you need to enter text into the “Explore” trends. For more help with Google Trends, you can see the Google support page on the subject.

use Google Trends a tool which visualizes data taken from Google search histories all around the world from the past several years. Work individually or in pairs to identify topics you wish to examine in greater detail. Spend some time just exploring the tool, but eventually you will need to choose a single topic or set of topics that you will use to answer the questions that appear on the bottom of the activity guide.

 Find a trend or set of trends you think is particularly interesting or personally relevant and try to tell a story from the data you see. Write down: A description of what you were trying to look for An accurate description of what the visualization is showing A plausible explanation of why that trend might have happened.

Share your “data stories” with each other.

It’s exciting to be able to look at so much data in such a concise way, and it certainly feels like we’ve seen a lot of good stories here. As we start thinking more about how we use data, however, we’ll need to make sure that the assumptions we’re making about our data are correct.

Turn in your Activity Guide Do the Assessment and Reflection in Code Studio No Homework – Again!! Hooray!