Assignment 1: ETX2250/ETF5922
Question 1 (5%)
In tutorial 2, you worked in groups to review one beautiful visualisation and one ugly visuali- sation. For the assignment you will revisit this exercise.
You task is to go back to the visualisations’ submitted on the discussion forum and polish your answer. This part of the assignment is an individual exercise, so you are able to change, update or extend what was submitted on the discussion forum as a group.
Rate your chosen visualisation on a scale from 1 to 5 stars, where:
• 1 star - This visualisation is absolutely dreadful, and you’d get no marks if you handed something like this in.
• 2 stars - This visualisation is below average, its violates most of the graphical principles we’ve learnt.
• 3 stars - This visualisation is average. Some aspects of this plot are good, but equally some are bad.
• 4 stars - This visualisation is above average. It adheres to most of the graphical principles we’ve learnt.
• 5 stars - This plot is so beautiful I should show Kate!
Support your rating by discussing what we’ve learnt about what makes a good data visu- alisation. This discussion should include how well your chosen visualisation adheres to the principles of graphical excellence and a recognition of any relevant elements of human percep-tion.
In selecting your visualisation, be sure that there is enough sophistication in the figure to display your knowledge on this topic.
Question 1 Submission
Submit both visualisations, your star ratings and your explanations in a pdf or html file. Use the template provided.
Question 2 (5%)
In tutorial 3, you worked in pairs to create one beautiful visualisation and one ugly visualisation. For the assignment you will revisit this exercise.
Go back to the visualisations’ you submitted on the discussion forum, and complete the oppo- site role. (i.e. If you were the good visualiser, now be the bad visualiser and vice versa).
This part of the assignment is an individual exercise, so you are expected to update or extend what was submitted on the discussion forum as a pair. Note: You are not restricted to use the same plots or plot types, and you are welcome to change your submission entirely if you want to.
Question 2 Submission
Submit a pdf or html that contains your updated visualisations’ alongside a dot point summary of what aspects of the visualisation you changed to make the visualisation bad, and what aspects of the visualisations you changed to make the visualisation good. Use the template provided.
Question 3 (10%)
Learning to create good visualisation takes a lot of practice. For this task you will create a range of different plots to explore the different aspects of what makes a good visualisation.
Pick a dataset from Moodle and use it in this exploratory analysis task. You can also use other data sets if you get approval from your lecturer.
This question is inspired by the following story of 1000 pictures, where producing quantity lead to better quality in the end.
Your challenge is to create at least 20 different plots. Explore your data and experiment with different kinds of geometries, aesthetics, scales and themes. These plots must each demonstrate a different skill or a different aspect of visualisation. Making simple variations to a plot, for example only changing text or fixed colour, will not count as a new plot. Plots created using facets or ggpairs also only count as a single plot.
Note do not waste time polishing these plots, that is not the goal here. The goal here to create lots of different visualisations. Polishing plots will come on the next assignment.
Question 3 Submission
For each of the plots, write 1 - 2 sentences about what you learnt about your data and or data visualisation. You might find some plots do not help you learn anything additional about your data, but were useful for you to see new geometries. That is okay, but write about why.
Create at least 5 plots in PowerBI, and at least 10 plots in R. You can chose how you create the remaining 5 plots.
Save your chosen 20 plots, and put them in a single Powerpoint or quarto presentation for marking. Put a single plot on each slide. Use the template provided.
Also upload your R Project, your data/data sets, any code you created, and your .pbix files in a single zipped folder.
Note
• Your next assignment will build upon the exploratory analysis in question 3, and you will use the same data set.
• For those who did not complete Tutorial 2 or Tutorial 3, you are expected to complete these tutorials as an individual (don’t worry about posting to the discussion forum), and then do the assignment question.
• If you use generative AI on your assignment, you must also acknowledge and submit the prompts used to support your work. If you do not, and you are found to have used
generative AI this will constitute a form of academic misconduct.