Mapping data to graphics
Content for Monday, June 12, 2023–Friday, June 16, 2023
Readings
- Hans Rosling, “200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes”
- Chapter 2 in Fundamentals of Data Visualization (Wilke 2018)
- Chapter 3 in Data Visualization (Healy 2018)
Possible questions to reflect on
Remember, you don’t need to answer all of these—or even any of them! These are just here to help guide your thinking. Write about whatever you want.
- Why is it important to visualize variables and data?
- What does it mean to map data to graph aesthetics?
- What data was mapped to which aesthetics in Rosling’s video?
Other resources
This tutorial by Cédric Scherer is an excellent demonstration of the grammar of graphics and the sequential nature of building up a plot layer-by-layer.
Slides
The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.
Fun fact: If you type ? (or shift + /) while going through the slides, you can see a list of special slide-specific commands.
Videos
Videos for each section of the lecture are available at this YouTube playlist.
- Introduction
- Data, aesthetics, and the grammar of graphics
- Grammatical layers
- Aesthetics in extra dimensions
- Tidy data
You can also watch the playlist (and skip around to different sections) here: