Career Focus

This course is designed for students who expect to analyze or present data during their career—and these days, data is everywhere, from finance to management consulting. For anyone working with complex information, visualization is a power tool that can drive insight and understanding. It can also be a compelling ingredient in clear and persuasive communication.

The course will also be useful for students who are planning on managing or advising teams that work with data. We will discuss how to critically evaluate visualizations, and how to use them as a bridge between quantitative analysis and decision-making.

Because the course will require hands-on work with data, students should have taken DSM (or have equivalent expertise).

Educational Objectives

Students will learn to use data visualization as a tool to gain actionable insights from data, and then communicate those insights to others. The format will be a departure from the standard case study method. Instead, we’ll focus on weekly projects that will require building visualizations in Tableau as well as extended in-class critiques.

Specific objectives include:

1. An understanding of the basic theory behind data visualization: perceptual science, design, and technical underpinnings, as well as how to match different techniques to different data sets.
2. The ability to create visualizations using Tableau
3. Knowledge of how to apply visualization techniques for both exploratory data analysis and communication of data
4. Ability to critique visualizations made by others, and understand common pitfalls that can lead to ineffective or even deceptive visualizations

Grading

Weekly homework will involve building and critiquing data visualizations. In some cases students will be expected to find, clean, or prepare their own data sets. There will be a two-week final project.

Grading is based on:

• 35% weekly homework
• 30% final project
• 35% class participation

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