Chakiera Shields

I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I have completed the graded portion BEFORE looking at anyone else's work on this assignment. Signed Chakiera Shields.

Part 1: Good Visualization

This interactive map does a great job at showing change over time and allowing the user to see data for private and public institutions. The color represents 2 different categorical data, private vs public, and if you can't differentiate between the bigger and smaller circles there is a zoom in feature. I think the visualization looks better on the chart rather than the map that is also available, even though the map is able to show spatial data (where the schools are located on the map) but location isn't the main focus of the data. It is also good that we can see the general trend by scrolling through time to see that over the past 6 years schools, whether they are private or public, have seen an increase in tuition and debt. The continuous data (the years) and the nominal data (public vs private, enrollment size, graduation rate, share of graduates with debt and athletic conference) work well with showing more/less data on the chart, depending on what the user wants to see.

Part 2a Bad Visualization:

This chart has a lot of high frequency data and looks too busy. It is an interactive chart and even after zooming in I was a little confused as to what the creator of the visualization was trying to prove. The continuous data shown to the side of the map tries to compare too much (poor children and extra money needed?), and it would be better to include percentages instead of +/- dollars; also, the color scheme would have been better if they used a gradation of a specific color. Moreover, the spatial data (national level, state level, county level) is still very busy and it is hard to appreciate the data even after figuring out what is being portrayed.

Part 2b Bad Visualization:

This visualization is one of many horrible visualizations shown on that webpage. It seeks to show where people in a specific state have migrated to/from over a period of time (continuous: 1900-2012) but the colors are tangled up in the graph and there is too much labeling. I also don't understand why there are percentages on the left and right side of the graph but it seems a little unnecessary. One thing that looks okay in the visualization is the very small spatial data of a map of the U.S that divides each section of nominal data into colors: west, midwest, south and north).

Part 3 Evaluation:

These visualizations were a little confusing in that at a first glance I couldn’t tell what exactly is being portrayed. Some of the colors used would not be beneficial to those that are colorblind but it seems like they tried to make use of different size shapes as well, to help differentiate between some sort of data. There are also no labels or anything written to help the user understand what is being portrayed and both the overview and zoomed in version of the visualization confuse me to the point where I don’t know what to look at first. It may be good that they used 3D to convey depth and multiple views of the visualization but other than that I believe there could have been a better way to show it.