Homework 1: Getting Started

Assigned: Monday, Jan 14, 2013
Due: Monday, Jan 28, 2013

Description

There are three separate parts to this assignment. The goals are to get a baseline for how you think about graph design and to introduce you to several of the tools we will be using this semester.

Part 1 - Graph Design IQ

Take Perceptual Edge's Graph Design IQ test at http://www.perceptualedge.com/files/GraphDesignIQ.html, and print a screenshot of your final score.

Submission: Submit a hard-copy of your screenshot in class on the due date.

Part 2 - Install tools

Reading

Notes on the various InfoVis systems and toolkits you might use this semester

Local Install

Download and install some popular tools on your own machine:

• R
• optional: Revolution Analytics - front-end/IDE for R (get the academic license)
• Tableau (PC only) - you will be receiving information about the academic license for Tableau Desktop (expires at the end of the semester)

R and Tableau are installed in the CS Open Research Lab. Tableau Desktop is installed on the 4 middle rows of machines.

CS Unix Install

We will be using a separate Linux machine (weiglevm) for development this semester. Access via ssh is limited to on-campus, but port 80 (web) is open for testing from off-campus.

Create a directory on weiglevm (~/weiglevm_html/cs795s13/) for your class work. Make sure that both ~/weiglevm_html/ and ~/weiglevm_html/cs795s13/ are world readable and executable (chmod 755).

Once this is done, you will be able to access files in ~/weiglevm_html/cs795s13/ via a browser at http://weiglevm.cs.odu.edu/~username/cs795s13/

Create a libs directory under ~/weiglevm_html/cs795s13/, and download the required libraries for these tools into ~/weiglevm_html/cs795s13/libs:

• D3.js
• Protovis
• jQuery Sparklines

Submission: No submission requirements.

Part 3 - Tutorials

Pick one system and one toolkit from below and perform some of the tutorials. Note that you don't need to do all of the tutorials, but do enough to get a feel for the tool.

Systems

• R - Martin Klein's tutorial
• Tableau - tutorial videos

Toolkits

• D3.js - tutorials from Interactive Data Visualization for the Web
• Protovis - Robert Kosara's "A Protovis Primer" part 1

Submission: For the system, submit a print-out of the results of the tutorial and a brief summary (paragraph) of your initial impressions of the system in class on the due date. For the toolkit, submit a URL (under http://weiglevm.cs.odu.edu/~username/cs795s13/) that has the results of your tutorial practice and a brief summary (paragraph) of your initial impressions of the toolkit.

Note: You may be asked in class to talk about few minutes about tools you tried out.