Today’s Plan
- Mayer Poster Update (Help!)
- Internship Opportunities
- Visualizing Complexity: COVID-19
- Homework
Mayer Update
From Michael:
I know this is late in the game, but I got Zackary’s title for her event: “Wherever You Are Is the Center of the Universe.”
It’s looking more and more like Lindou Auditorium.
Internship Opportunities
Okay, so are there any writing minors with podcasting experience looked for an internship/indie study. We have our set up, and we are serious about creating weekly podcasts—including interviews, etc.—and we thought it could be really practical experience for some student. We’ve done it with students who need a credit or 2 to get to 120 and graduation. But we thought maybe as a full-time gig?
And, also, The CEA Critic is always looking for a full-time intern.
Visualizing Complexity: COVID-19
Note: I’ve debated this project a lot over the past 48 hours.
Last class, I mapped out 4 projects of varying lengths for the rest of our year. Here’s what I wrote about the Visualizing Complexity Project:
This project kills two of the proverbial birds with one deliverable:
Ethically and Responsibly Presenting Data
Designing an Infographic that Doesn’t Suck
Normally, when I teach this class, I have a visualization project that asks students to choose something complicated, research it, and present their research in a visually engaging and coherent way. In short, to take something complicated and make it seem simple.
This semester I want to tweak that assignment a bit, and in the process make it a bit less open-ended. As a rhetorician, I have found COVID to be incredibly problematic given the amount of misinformation and disinformation it has engendered in America (while mis/disinformation are problems world wide, they are particularly problematic in America, which has a more divisive political field, a history of freedom of the press, a lack of social programs, a greater mistrust of government, etc etc than most other places). Also, Emerson and Thoreau. Fuck those guys. I digress.
This semester, I’d like the visualization project to focus on designing some kind of infographic that deals with some element of COVID 19. In Wednesday’s class, we are going to spend some time collaboratively collecting information, looking at/for existing visualizations, and thinking about different possibilities for projects.
Today I worked on nailing this assignment down a bit more so I can supply you with specifics.
First, I identified a data set with which everyone can work. The data set comes from Our World in Data (who, in turn, gets their data from John Hopkins University). We are going to download the complete data set as a .csv (comma separated values) from their Github site, which we can open in Excel (or Google Sheets, though it is a bit much for Sheets to handle).
This data set is absolutely massive–it contains over 122,000 rows of data (the rows equate to different days for different countries). (Note: United States starts on row 116874). The columns track a massive amount of information, including:
- Daily data on total cases
- Daily data on new cases
- Daily data on total deaths
- Daily data on new deaths
- Daily data on vaccinations
Second, I have pinned down some clearer expectations for the project. Your goal is to translate this numerical data into charts, graphs, or timelines that visual the pandemic. What you visualize, and what argument you perceive that visualization making, is up to you.
- You might imagine you’ve been hired by a pharmaceutical company to produce and infographic on the efficacy of vaccines.
- You might produce an infographic to hand to your uncle Roger during Thanksgiving. Chew on that Rog.
- You might create an infographic that compares and contrasts the American COVID experience to other countries around the world. Or you might create an infographic that focuses more attention on just one country
Whatever you create, I would like your final infographic to have at least 4 charts/graphs/timelines. At least one of these graphs should be a multitudinal timeline, meaning it should track more than one thing (comparative) over time (for instance, Deaths in the United States compared to Canada and Mexico from March 1st 2020 to October 1st 2021).
I imagine this will lead to a 10 block grid design (two top blocks for heading and textual description, 4 blocks for graphs, 2 blocks at the bottom for a kind of conclusions).
Homework: Holy Crap, How Do I Get Started?
Before we visualize data, we have to think about what we might visualize. You will create smaller spreadsheets, using Excel–one spreadsheet for each graph you intend to make. (NOTE: if 4 graphs seems excessive, we can share data next week).
In Monday’s class I am going to share a tutorial on how to create graphs in InDesign (debating between a few, this looks good now). We’ll work on it a bit in class, and I will have you finish it in place of an Adobe InDesign CRiaB lesson next week.
In preparation for that, I’d like you to assemble the data for two graphs. Create a new Excel sheet, and make sure you have at least 8-12 data points. Let’s look at an example.
We should have some time to play with. Let’s use this spreadsheet to collaborate on a sample data set.
