CSC 444 - Data Visualization

Fall 2025

Meets: Mon./Wed. 2:00-3:15pm, Saguaro Hall, Rm 101
Instructor: Joshua A. Levine
Office: GS 754
Office Hours: Mon./Wed. 3:30-4:30pm, or by appointment

TAs:

Md Asiful Islam, asifulislam@arizona.edu
James Shen, sjwjames@arizona.edu

TA Office Hours (primarily for issues with grading):

Md Asiful Islam, Mon. 12:00-1:00pm, GS 942
James Shen, Fri. 3:00-4:00pm, GS 934

Course Syllabus
D2L
Campuswire

Course Calendar

(tentative, subject to change)

Week	Date	Monday	Date	Wednesday

1	Aug 25	Introduction	Aug 27	HTML/CSS/SVG Basics
2	Sep 01	-- Labor Day (Off) --	Sep 03	Javascript Basics
3	Sep 08	Javascript + DOM, SVG	Sep 10	d3 Intro
4	Sep 15	d3 Joins and Scales	Sep 17	Design Principles
5	Sep 22	Perception	Sep 24	Data Abstraction
6	Sep 29	Color	Oct 01	Color in d3
7	Oct 06	Visual Encoding	Oct 08	Tasks and Interaction
8	Oct 13	Views, Focus+Context	Oct 15	Tabular Arrangements
9	Oct 20	Hierarchies/Trees	Oct 22	Graphs
10	Oct 27	-- Midterm Exam --	Oct 29	-- IEEE VIS --
11	Nov 03	-- IEEE VIS --	Nov 05	-- IEEE VIS --
12	Nov 10	Cartography	Nov 12	Interpolation
13	Nov 17	Isosurfaces	Nov 19	Volumetric Data
14	Nov 24	Volume Rendering	Nov 26	Transfer Function Design
15	Dec 01	Flow Visualization	Dec 03	Text and Sets
16	Dec 08	Retrospective	Dec 10	Final Exam Review

Final Exam: Dec. 12, 2025 01:00 PM, released on Gradescope.
Highlighted dates have an assignment due by midnight.

Boxed dates correspond to the nearest class day to the deadlines for dropping without a W (Sep. 07, 2025) and withdrawing (Nov. 02, 2025) for this semester. See Fall 2025 Graduate Dates and Deadlines for complete details.

Link to Google drive folder with all lecture slides

Lecture 01 - Introduction (slides)

Date: August 25, 2025

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Hans Rosling, TED 2006
A Tour through the Visualization Zoo., Jeffrey Heer, Michael Bostock, Vadim Ogievetsky. Communications of the ACM, 53(6) pp. 59-67, Jun 2010.
A Tour of Visualizations, Good, Bad, and Ugly Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).

Lecture 02 - HTML/CSS/SVG Basics (slides)

Date: August 27, 2025

Required Reading:

The Basics of the Web Stack - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).
Murray, Chapter 3, pgs. 17-36, 52-62 (all pages except for the section on Javascript) (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2025/l02_examples` to download (updated after class)

Lecture 03 - Javascript Basics (slides)

Date: September 03, 2025

Required Reading:

Javascript - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).
Murray, Chapter 3, pgs. 36-52 (the remaining section on Javascript) (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Speaking JavaScript: An In-Depth Guide for Programmers - Chapter 1. Basic JavaScript (note, most chapters of this book cover Javascript in great detail, but the focus of the book is ES5)
Eloquent JavaScript, 3rd Edition: A Modern Introduction to Programming (note, this is included as a reference. The book is a great way to learn ES6, but you need not read it all at once)
Advice on Learning Javascript - Michael Gleicher (Wisconsin). Other than the textbook links, check out the video lectures at the bottom of this page for more repetition on the basics of the language, closures, and more
Lecture 3 Activities - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).
Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2025/l03_examples` to download (updated after class)

Lecture 04 - Javascript + DOM, SVG (slides)

Date: September 08, 2025

Required Reading:

DOM Manipulation - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).

Optional Reading:

Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2025/l04_examples` to download (updated after class)

Lecture 05 - d3 Intro (slides)

Date: September 10, 2025

Required Reading:

Murray, Chapter 5,6 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)
Welcome to d3 - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).

Optional Reading:

Bostock, Three Little Circles
Bostock, Thinking with Joins
Bostock, How Selections Work
Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2025/l05_examples` to download (updated after class)

Lecture 06 - d3 Joins and Scales (slides)

Date: September 15, 2025

Required Reading:

Murray, Chapter 7 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)
d3 Scales - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).

Optional Reading:

d3 Drills - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).
Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2025/l06_examples` to download (updated after class)

Lecture 07 - Design Principles (draft slides)

Date: September 17, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 1, 6.10 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

99% Details. Podcast from 99% Invisible, Sep 2010. Full transcript if you prefer to read rather than listen.
Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2001.

Lecture 08 - Perception

Date: September 22, 2025

Required Reading:

Ware, Information Visualization, Chapter 3. Note that this book is free to access on campus (the above link will not work off campus).
Attention and Visual Memory in Visualization and Computer Graphics. Christopher G. Healey, James T. Enns. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 18(7): 1170-1188 (2012)

Optional Reading:

Gestalt principles (Part 1) Bang Wong. Nature Methods 7, pp. 863, Nov 2010.
Gestalt principles (Part 2) Bang Wong. Nature Methods 7, pp. 941, Dec 2010.

Lecture 09 - Data Abstraction

Date: September 24, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 2 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

On the Theory of Scales of Measurement. S. S. Stevens. Science, 103(2684), pp. 677-680, June 1946.

Lecture 10 - Color

Date: September 29, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 10.1-10.3, 6.9 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Ware, Information Visualization, Chapter 4. Note that this book is free to access on campus (the above link will not work off campus).
Lab and HCL Color Spaces - Mike Bostock.
Color (listen) - Radiolab
http://www.brucelindbloom.com Bruce Lindbloom. Useful color information, studies, and Files.
Is Your Red The Same as My Red? (watch) - Vsauce.

Lecture 11 - Color in d3

Date: October 01, 2025

Required Reading:

Which color scale to use when visualizing data. Lisa Charlotte Muth, 2021 (All 4 parts).
See also: How to pick more beautiful colors for your data visualizations.

Optional Reading:

Color Vision - Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019).
Rainbow Color Map (Still) Considered Harmful. D. Borland and R. Taylor. Computer Graphics and Applications, 27(2), pp. 14-17, 2007.
d3-scale-chromatic
D3 Scales Playground - Carlos Scheidegger.
Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2025/l11_examples` to download

Lecture 12 - Visual Encoding

Date: October 06, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 5, 6.3-6.6 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Automating the Design of Graphical Presentations of Relational Information. Jock Mackinlay. ACM TOG 5(2), 1986.
Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods. William S. Cleveland and Robert McGill, Journal of the American statistical association 79, no. 387 (1984): 531-554.

Lecture 13 - Tasks and Interaction

Date: October 08, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 3, 6.8, 11 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Smooth and Efficient Zooming and Panning. Jack J. van Wijk and Wim A.A. Nuij, Proc. InfoVis 2003, p. 15-22
Animated Transitions in Statistical Data Graphics. Jeffrey Heer and George G. Robertson. IEEE TVCG (Proc. InfoVis 2007) 13(6): 1240-1247, 2007.

Lecture 14 - Views, Focus+Context

Date: October 13, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 12, 6.7, 14 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)
A review of overview+detail, zooming, and focus+context interfaces. Andy Cockburn, Amy Karlson, and Benjamin B. Bederson. ACM Computing Surveys 41(1), 2008.

Optional Reading:

The visual design and control of the trellis display. R. Becker, W. Cleveland, M. Shyu. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 5(2), 1996.
Toolglass and magic lenses: the see-through interface. Eric A. Bier, Maureen C. Stone, Ken Pier, William Buxton, and Tony D. DeRose, Proc. SIGGRAPH, pp. 73-76, 1993.
Interactive Coordinated Multiple-View Visualization of Biomechanical Motion Data. Daniel F. Keefe, Marcus Ewert, William Ribarsky, Remco Chang. IEEE Trans. Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. Vis 2009), 15(6):1383-1390, 2009.

Lecture 15 - Tabular Arrangements

Date: October 15, 2025

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 7, 15.3-15.5 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 13 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)
Multi-Scale Banking to 45 Degrees. Jeffrey Heer, Maneesh Agrawala. Proc. InfoVis 2006, published as IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 12(5): 701-708, Sep/Oct 2006.
Stacked Graphs - Geometry & Aesthetics. Lee Byron, Martin Wattenberg. Proceedings of InfoVis 2008.
Taggle: Scalable Visualization of Tabular Data through Aggregation. Katarina Furmanova, Samuel Gratzl, Holger Stitz, Thomas Zichner, Miroslava Jaresova, Alexander Lex, Marc Streit. Information Visualization, 19(2): 114-136, 2019
Hierarchical Parallel Coordinates for Exploration of Large Datasets. Ying-Huey Fua, Matthew O. Ward, and Elke A. Rundensteiner. IEEE Visualization 1999.

A00 - Survey
Assigned: Aug 25
Due: Sep 03 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Sep 10

A01 - HTML + SVG
Assigned: Sep 03
Due: Sep 10 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Sep 17

A02 - Javascript
Assigned: Sep 10
Due: Sep 17 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Sep 24

A03 - D3
Assigned: Sep 17
Due: Sep 24 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 01

A04 - Scales, Axes, Transitions
Assigned: Sep 24
Due: Oct 01 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 08

A05 - Color Spaces
Assigned: Oct 01
Due: Oct 08 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 17

A06 - Linked Views, Brushing
Assigned: Oct 08
Due: Oct 20 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 27

A07 - Parallel Coordinates
Assigned: Oct 15
Due: Nov 05 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Nov 12

A08 - Treemaps
Assigned: Oct 22
Due: Nov 17 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Nov 24

A09 - Marching Squares
Assigned: Nov 17
Due: Nov 26 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Dec 03

A10 - Transfer Functions
Assigned: Nov 26
Due: Dec 08 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Dec 12

A11 - Review (Extra Credit)
Assigned: Dec 03
Due: Dec 10 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Dec 12