(A) Critiquing visualizations.
Read sections 1, 3, and 4 of the following article describing experiments in evaluating web page access patterns:
Tauscher, L. and Greenberg, S. (1997) How
People Revisit Web Pages: Empirical Findings and Implications for the Design
of History Systems. International Journal of Human Computer Studies
Special issue on World Wide Web Usability, 47(1), p97-138, Academic
Press.
http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/grouplab/papers/1997/97-HowUsersRepeat.IJHCS/RevisitArticle.html
Use principles and observations from Tufte, Kosslyn, MacKinlay, and class lecture, as well as your own judgement, to assess and critique figures in this paper.
(B) Critique or Create.
Do one of the following two options:
You can use visual displays you find produced by someone else using real data, or sketch out what such a visual display should look like using made-up data (as done in class for the web page access examples). No not use the url/web example from lecture.
(C) Start Planning.
Think about what dataset you'd like to use for the next assignment. You will be using several tools for exploring multidimensional datasets. The dataset should have at least one nominal value and at least 300 records. It's best if you can choose a dataset from which an interesting pattern might emerge.
Sample Datasets:
Programs available on the lab machines:
Also, start thinking about final projects. Here's one that has occurred to me recently: