Readings

Subtleties of Color by Robert Simmon

The use of color to display data is a solved problem, right? Just pick a palette from a drop-down menu (probably either a grayscale ramp or a rainbow), set start and end points, press “apply,” and you’re done. Although we all know it’s not that simple, that’s often how colors are chosen in the real world. As a result, many visualizations fail to represent the underlying data as well as they could.

Read the blog series and optionally also watch the lecture.

Use the tag “R2” when you post your assessment of the readings and the questions raised.

Poor Form

Read Healy's introductory chapter from Data Visualization for Social Science:

• Look at Data: What Makes Bad Figures Bad

Use the tag “R1” when you post your assessment of the reading and the questions raised.