All Things Data
Assignment #7 - MORE LIFE EXPECTANCY
This assignment I found to be a lot easier to work through. I think that both has to do with the fact that I’ve worked with HTML before and I feel like I’m finally starting to better understand how things work in p5.js. As well as in assignment 6, I found myself better able to use and understand the p5 library. It’s been very useful to be able to follow along with Joey’s code example in this assignment, as well as with the template. Everything was mostly set up and was very easy to work with to make this work. I was also feeling a little bit bitter after going down a rabbit hole on life expectancy, which is reflected in the content of my website. Hope you enjoy reading!
Assignment #6 - Life Expectancy
This is the assignment that really got me. After I looked at the code template Joey provided us to set up our p5 sketches, as well as looking through the codes of many other people in my class, I started to understand how certain things work. I think my mistake was trying to jump right in, rather than understand how and why certain things worked. I finally was able to get the hang of things (except for breaking my code because I capitalized a word, and that really did break everything) and I was able to add a little image, change some colors, change some fonts, and really try to make this look more engaging, rather than a boring black & white page. Again, taking an existing code and working through it really helped me frame just how much p5.js can do. Enjoy my sketch!
Assignment #5 - Visualizing Co2 Emissions
So, building this visualization from scratch really intimidated me and after a few not so successful attempts at it, I put it down. I decided to come back to it and approach it with a different point of view. I decided to move backwards. So, I started with the code Joey provided (shoutout Joey, best prof of the year award goes to you!) and then toggle it here and there to try to better understand things. Little tweaks appear in my “final” version - but what was most rewarding about this was getting to see how things could and would shift with the tiniest changes made in the code. I was getting really hung up on not being able to see the end of the x-axis, and I tried to change the canvas size as well as the increment of years on the x-axis, but alas, that did not really work. Actually, I broke everything trying to do this, so I reverted back.
Visual representation of how I’m feeling at this point of the semester:
October 30, 2018.
Assignment #3 - How does computation and data visualization relate to your research interests?
My research interests are in the space of healthcare, immigration reform and advocacy, and refugee rights. I see a huge role for computation and overall data collection/visualizations in these spaces -- just look at any health related report and you'll see data visualizations all over it. It’s important to have a basic understanding of this simply because, especially in the healthcare world, people like to look at and measure results. This is often the only way programs and such can prove outcomes which can often lead to more positive change within the overall healthcare world. I think I am particularly interested in coding because it makes things and can make huge data sets easier to process, understand, and more readable for other people. Coding is something I used to do back in high school, but it was limited to HTML and CSS coding. I remember back then I loved spending time creating websites and making my ideas come to life. I’m looking forward to reentering the world of coding, this time for practical uses that could even help with the measurement needed in terms of my thesis project.
Assignment #2 - Dear Data Mobility
I really appreciated how this project made me realize my routine is kind of all over the place. It makes sense, it was still the beginning of the school year, I had just moved, and I was still getting a bunch of my things up from MD — since I had to do my move essentially on my own. This made me also realize that I don’t really go anywhere unless I have to or I’m feeling social (which is rare). Plenty of time went by, but I really did not get out much. Oh well.
I then took all this and tried (+ failed) to visualize it. Not my best work, but here is my Dear Data postcard:
and on the back, I wrote out my estimated costs:
Assignment #1 - Interactive Viz Critique -
So, I’ve been looking at a lot of visualizations, and a lot of them are just so HEAVY. So I wanted to focus on this one: Queen Four Visions. I found it exploring Behance.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/6172023/Queen-Four-Visions
Here’s a better PDF version of the visualization, one you can zoom in and out of.
http://www.digitalcreative.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Queen-four-visions.pdf
So essentially, this visualization took the five most used words in Queen songs and analyzed the frequency of each word. This way they were able to trace back to who was the author of each song, as each band member would use each word at a different frequency.
I really enjoyed looking at this visualization. It makes it pretty clear who wrote what but also, what themes each band member focused on.
Clear, bright colors are what I feel like make this visual stand out. Also, I just really love Queen and rock music in general.
I think that if you follow each artists’ color, it kind of tells a story. For example, Brian May, throughout his career wrote a lot about love, but had a period of time in the middle of his career with queen where he had a lot of focus on time, which then led him to later on in his career think and write more on themes relating to life. Although this could lead to assumptions, I feel like it tells a story of a man who overtime shifted his focus from love to time to life.
Song lyrics and music in general is one of those things that connects humans on a completely different level. Music can connect strangers in a way almost nothing else can.
I feel like this visual is easy to trust and doesn’t cause me any uncertainty, simply because there isn’t much to gain in misleading anyone viewing it. Also because it details just how the creators used resources from the web as well as word counters to count exactly how many times a word was used. Also, this visualization only serves the purpose of informing anyone who cares about Queen lyrics and themes throughout them.
I think the only thing I would improve on this is that it initially is a lot to look at and it took me quite some time to be able to get through a lot of it. I know this is something that can happen with visualizations that have a lot to say, so it’s not an easy problem to fix.
That’s all for now! See ya later Joey, and anyone else actually reading these… cause I guess this is the internet, which is a big and scary place that almost anyone can get to…