CSC 444 - Data Visualization

Fall 2024

Meets: Mon./Wed. 2:00-3:15pm, Gould-Simpson, Rm 906
Instructor: Joshua A. Levine
Office: GS 754
Office Hours: Mon./Wed. 3:30-4:30pm, or by appointment

TAs:

Tian Tan, tiantan@arizona.edu

TA Office Hours (primarily for issues with grading):

Tian Tan, Wed. 11:00am-12:00pm, GS 938

Course Syllabus
D2L
Piazza

Course Calendar

(tentative, subject to change)

Week	Date	Monday	Date	Wednesday

1	Aug 26	Introduction	Aug 28	HTML/CSS/SVG Basics
2	Sep 02	-- Labor Day (Off) --	Sep 04	Javascript Basics
3	Sep 09	Javascript + DOM, SVG	Sep 11	d3 Intro
4	Sep 16	d3 Joins and Scales	Sep 18	Design Principles
5	Sep 23	Perception	Sep 25	Data Abstraction
6	Sep 30	Color	Oct 02	Color in d3
7	Oct 07	Visual Encoding	Oct 09	Tasks and Interaction
8	Oct 14	-- IEEE VIS --	Oct 16	-- IEEE VIS --
9	Oct 21	Views, Focus+Context	Oct 23	-- Midterm Exam --
10	Oct 28	Tabular Arrangements	Oct 30	Hierarchies/Trees
11	Nov 04	Graphs	Nov 06	Cartography
12	Nov 11	-- Veterans Day (Off) --	Nov 13	Interpolation
13	Nov 18	Isosurfaces	Nov 20	Volumetric Data
14	Nov 25	Volume Rendering	Nov 27	Transfer Function Design
15	Dec 02	Flow Visualization	Dec 04	Text and Sets
16	Dec 09	Retrospective	Dec 11	Final Exam Review

Final Exam: Friday, Dec. 13, 2024 1:00 PM, released on Gradescope 24 hours before (Thursday 1pm) and due 24 hrs after (Saturday 1pm).
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. 08, 2024) and withdrawing (Nov. 03, 2024) for this semester. See Fall 2024 Graduate Dates and Deadlines for complete details.

Link to Google drive folder with all lecture slides

Lecture 01 - Introduction

Date: August 26, 2024

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

Date: August 28, 2024

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-Fall2024/l02_examples` to download

Lecture 03 - Javascript Basics

Date: September 04, 2024

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-Fall2024/l03_examples` to download

Lecture 04 - Javascript + DOM, SVG

Date: September 09, 2024

Required Reading:

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

Optional Reading:

Example Code from Class - use `git clone https://github.com/UA-CSC444-Fall2024/l04_examples` to download

Lecture 05 - d3 Intro

Date: September 11, 2024

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-Fall2024/l05_examples` to download

Lecture 06 - d3 Joins and Scales

Date: September 16, 2024

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-Fall2024/l06_examples` to download

Lecture 07 - Design Principles

Date: September 18, 2024

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.
Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2001.

Lecture 08 - Perception

Date: September 23, 2024

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 25, 2024

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 30, 2024

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 02, 2024

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-Fall2024/l11_examples` to download

Lecture 12 - Visual Encoding

Date: October 07, 2024

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 09, 2024

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 21, 2024

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 28, 2024

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.

Lecture 16 - Hierarchies/Trees

Date: October 30, 2024

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 9 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)
Treevis.net: A Tree Visualization Reference. Hans-Jorg Schulz, IEEE CG&A, 31(6), pp. 11-15, Nov.-Dec. 2011.
See also: A Visual Bibliography of Tree Visualization. InfoVis 2010 Best Poster.

Optional Reading:

Cushion Treemaps: visualization of hierarchical information. Jack J. van Wijk and Huub van de Wetering, Proc InfoVis 1999, pp 73-78.
Focus+Context Display and Navigation Techniques for Enhancing Radial, Space-Filling Hierarchy Visualizations. John T. Stasko, Eugene Zhang, INFOVIS 2000: 57-65

Lecture 17 - Graphs

Date: November 04, 2024

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

A technique for drawing directed graphs. Emden R. Gansner, Eleftherios Koutsofios, Stephen C. North, and Kiem-Phong Vo, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering 19(3), 214-230, 1993.
Hierarchical Edge Bundles: Visualization of Adjacency Relations in Hierarchical Data. Danny Holten, Proc InfoVis 06, published as IEEE TVCG 12(5), p 741-748, 2006.
Murray, Chapter 11 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Lecture 18 - Cartography

Date: November 06, 2024

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 8.1-8.3 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Unfolding the Earth: Myriahedral Projections. Jarke J. van Wijk, The Cartographic Journal, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp.32-42, February 2008. See also Additional Media.
Bostock, Command-Line Cartography
Murray, Chapter 12 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Lecture 19 - Interpolation

Date: November 13, 2024

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

d3-interpolate
Telea, Chapter 3.1-3.2 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)
Human Factors in Visualization Research. Melanie Tory, Torsten Möller. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 10(1): 72-84, 2004.

Lecture 20 - Isosurfaces

Date: November 18, 2024

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 8.4.1 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Marching Cubes: A High Resolution 3D Surface Construction Algorithm. William E. Lorensen and Harvey E. Cline, Computer Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 87), 21 (4), pp. 163-169 (July 1987, Anaheim, California).
Data structures for soft objects. Geoff Wyvill, Craig McPheeters, Brian Wyvill. The Visual Computer 2(4): 227-234 (1986).
The Asymptotic Decider: Resolving the Ambiguity in Marching Cubes. Gregory M. Nielson, Bernd Hamann. IEEE Visualization 1991: 83-93
A Near Optimal Isosurface Extraction Algorithm Using the Span Space. Yarden Livnat, Han-Wei Shen, Christopher R. Johnson. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 2(1): 73-84 (1996)

Lecture 21 - Volumetric Data

Date: November 20, 2024

Required Reading:

Telea, Chapter 2, 3.3-3.5 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Lecture 22 - Volume Rendering

Date: November 25, 2024

Required Reading:

Munzner, Chapter 8.4.2 (Note: the textbook is available electronically through the UA Library for those on campus)

Optional Reading:

Display of Surfaces from Volume Data. Marc Levoy, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 8(3), 29-37, 1988.
You may also want to read the errata.
Real-Time Volume Graphics. Klaus Engel, Markus Hadwiger, Joe Kniss, Aaron Lefohn, Christof Rezk-Salama and Daniel Weiskopf. In ACM Siggraph 2004, Course 28, 2004.
While I recommend the book, you can Focus on Chapters 1, 3 and Sections III and VII in the coursenotes their SIGGRAPH 2004 course, as well as
the slides from newer coursenotes from EG 2006, specifically parts 1,3,5-7.

Lecture 23 - Transfer Function Design

Date: November 27, 2024

Required Reading:

The Transfer Function Bake-Off. Hanspeter Pfister, William E. Lorensen, Chandrajit L. Bajaj, Gordon L. Kindlmann, William J. Schroeder, Lisa Sobierajski Avila, Ken Martin, Raghu Machiraju, Jinho Lee. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 21(3): 16-22 (2001).

Optional Reading:

Multidimensional Transfer Functions for Interactive Volume Rendering. Joe Kniss, Gordon L. Kindlmann, Charles D. Hansen IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 8(3): 270-285 (2002).
The original paper was Best Paper, Vis 2001: Interactive Volume Rendering Using Multi-Dimensional Transfer Functions and Direct Manipulation Widgets. Joe Kniss, Gordon L. Kindlmann, Charles D. Hansen. IEEE Visualization, pp. 255-262, 2001.

Lecture 24 - Flow Visualization

Date: December 02, 2024

Required Reading:

Munzner, Visualization Analysis and Design, Chapter 8.5

Optional Reading:

Flow Visualization. Stephen Kline (National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films). 35 min running time.
Check out the Film Notes as well.
Integrating ODEs Numerically. Carlos Scheidegger (CSC 444 Fall 2019)
Time and Streak Surfaces for Flow Visualization in Large Time-Varying Data Sets. Harinarayan Krishnan, Christoph Garth, Kenneth I. Joy. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 15(6): 1267-1274 (2009)
Comparing 2D Vector Field Visualization Methods: A User Study. David H. Laidlaw, Robert M. Kirby, Cullen D. Jackson, J. Scott Davidson, Timothy S. Miller, Marco da Silva, William H. Warren, Michael J. Tarr. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 11(1): 59-70 (2005).

Lecture 25 - Text and Sets

Date: December 04, 2024

Required Reading:

Optional Reading:

Jigsaw: Supporting Investigative Analysis through Interactive Visualization. John T. Stasko, Carsten Görg, Zhicheng Liu. Information Visualization 7(2): 118-132 (2008).
See also, Additional Media.
UpSet: Visualization of Intersecting Sets. Alexander Lex, Nils Gehlenborg, Hendrik Strobelt, Romain Vuillemot, Hanspeter Pfister. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 20(12): 1983-1992 (2014)
Bubble Sets: Revealing Set Relations with Isocontours over Existing Visualizations. Christopher Collins, Gerald Penn, M. Sheelagh T. Carpendale. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 15(6): 1009-1016 (2009)

Lecture 26 - Retrospective

Date: December 09, 2024

Required Reading:

Let’s Do Virtuous Data Visualization. Michael Correll (medium)

Optional Reading:

After the storm: Considerations for information visualization. M. Pauline Baker and Colleen Bushell. IEEE CG&A 15(3): 12-15, 1995.
Ethical Dimensions of Visualization Research. Michael Correll. ACM CHI, pp. 1-13. 2019.
How Deceptive are Deceptive Visualizations?: An Empirical Analysis of Common Distortion Techniques. Anshul Vikram Pandey, Katharina Rall, Margaret L. Satterthwaite, Oded Nov, Enrico Bertini. ACM CHI, pp. 1469-1478, 2015.

A00 - Survey
Assigned: Aug 26
Due: Sep 04 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Sep 11

A01 - HTML + SVG
Assigned: Sep 04
Due: Sep 11 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Sep 18

A02 - Javascript
Assigned: Sep 11
Due: Sep 18 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Sep 25

A03 - D3
Assigned: Sep 18
Due: Sep 25 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 02

A04 - Scales, Axes, Transitions
Assigned: Sep 25
Due: Oct 02 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 09

A05 - Color Spaces
Assigned: Oct 02
Due: Oct 09 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 16

A06 - Linked Views, Brushing
Assigned: Oct 09
Due: Oct 21 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Oct 28

A07 - Parallel Coordinates
Assigned: Oct 28
Due: Nov 06 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Nov 13

A08 - Treemaps
Assigned: Nov 06
Due: Nov 18 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Nov 25

A09 - Marching Squares
Assigned: Nov 18
Due: Nov 27 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Dec 04

A10 - Transfer Functions
Assigned: Nov 27
Due: Dec 09 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Dec 13

A11 - Review (Extra Credit)
Assigned: Dec 04
Due: Dec 11 11:59:59 PM
Graded: Dec 13