Special Topics in Political Science (390-0-20)

Topic

Political Data Visualization

Instructors

Alexander Coppock

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 214: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

COURSE TITLE: The Visualization of Social and Political Data

This course is an introduction to data visualization with a focus on political and social data. Our main textbook is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, a foundational book that explores the history of data visualization and offers a perspective on how graphs should be constructed. We also learn from other visualization pioneers not included in Tufte's review such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Florence Nightingale. Our secondary textbook is the ggplot2 book by Hadley Wickham, an indispensable resource for constructing statistical graphs in the programming language R. We also connect the principles of data visualization to some abstract artists including Sol Le Wit and Agnes Martin. The main goal of the course is to help students to communicate both "what we know and why we think we know it" through excellent data visualization.

Learning Objectives

fluency in ggplot; ability to imagine the dataset behind visualizations and thereby evaluate them.

Teaching Method

Lecture and discussion section for coding

Class Materials (Required)

Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics Press, 1983. ISBN 0-9613921-0-X.

Associated Classes

DIS - University Library 3370: Fri 10:00AM - 10:50AM

DIS - University Library 3370: Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM