U-M data visualization librarian Justin Joque pointed our team to the Los Angeles Times‘ series of visual data on fundraising for the 2016 presidential election.

Here are some things we talked about when we discussed this in our face-to-face workshop that could form a discussion in your classroom in a Data of the Day exercise.

Here’s a partial view of the first graphic, followed by discussions we had about it.

• Sometimes, there are graphics that look like they are lacking details or information, but the information is found elsewhere on the page. That is the case here. Rule of thumb: don’t decontextualize (or try to recontexualize) a graphic from text it was designed to accompany.
• We wondered about how pink and green would look to those who were color-blind or printing this out in black-and-white. If you are making a visualization and need colorblind-safe or printer-friendly colors? Try Color Brewer 2 as a tool.

We then scrolled down to the maps showing amount raised by candidate (sorry – couldn’t grab a Kwout), a technique known as small multiples, which shows you many small graphics that you can compare with

• Lots of money comes from the big states. Does this mean that more money becomes from big states because they are have the most people (and, by logical probability) the most donors? Or is there some other reason? What do these maps really tell you with confidence?
• Be sure to scroll down to the less popular candidates. How does the visualized data of Chaffee or Pataki illuminate in ways different from that for Clinton, for example?
• It’s hard to tell the difference between lighter and darker hues of greens, making comparisons between middle states hard to do.
• You can mouse over the states for more data (but not on mobile). Nothing signals to the reader that you can mouse over data.

And in general, we talked about …

• Where does your eye go first? Number? Image? How does that change

Our data visualization expert Justin Joque pointed us to this infographic, which we discussed over our face-to-face meeting. We thought you’d enjoy hearing our conversation and considering this as an example for your students’ discussion.

If you were sharing this with a class, you might open up the conversation with an open question like, “What do you see/notice?”

As your students respond, here are some aspects you could consider unpacking with your students to not only have an interesting conversation but also connect them to some of the important and critical thinking questions behind visualizations.

• What is the “story” of this infographic? Is it clearly told? How? What are the elements that you see that tell this story?
• Romney and Obama have very different-looking heads. How does the size clarify or obfuscate?
• Is there an unstated point of view? What is it? How do you know? How does this point of view influence how you see the information?
• Notice the artistic choices the creator makes (e.g., 7.6% is a different font size from 25.5%). How do these choices change the way you understand the data?
• Do the colors imply that some funds are “good” sources and some “bad”? What do you make of this?
• How (or in what order) did you read this? Left to right? Up and down? Inside/outside? How did this change the way you took in and comprehended the information?
• By using the heads as the “container” for the visualized content, it means that the 7.6% and 25.5% are not proportional. Is this useful? What implicit message might this visual choice be giving, apart from the data itself?
• What is the message the creator wants you to get? How do design elements emphasize or detract from that message?
• How might visualizing this differently (e.g., a pie chart or bar graph) communicate this data differently? How would different visualizations influence the way the message was delivered to viewers or readers?
• Are the artists who create visualizations responsible for showing only the data, or is some artistic license to add impact OK or even desirable?
• What did you learn after a few minutes of discussing this infographic that you didn’t notice at first? In other words, how did time help you incubate, refine, or augment your understanding?
• What role might confirmation bias play in this graphic? Is it geared toward Obama voters?
• What can you elicit from a critical reading of the text surrounding the visual?

Are you missing holiday sweets? Our teammate Connie Williams has a blog post up on AASL’s Knowledge Quest blog about how to practice unpacking data with cookie recipes:

Data and the chocolate chip cookie challenge | Knowledge Quest via kwout

Bon appetit!

Kristin