Data visualization has taken many forms aided greatly by access to computers and cell phones. However, some basic concepts remain in developing effective data visualization. This assignment builds on the Module 4 - Keeping It Real Discussion: What's Up with Data Visualization? that focuses on Tufte's list of graphical excellence qualities.

To continue learning about data visualization, read sections 5 and 6 of Seeing & Understanding Data (PDF). Download Seeing & Understanding Data (PDF)

Also, watch this video.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - the Joy of Stats (YouTube 4:47)Links to an external site.

• Re-play Rosling's visualization at your own speed.
• Explore the data for a single country by selecting it in the rightmost column.
• Write about the story of the world when the dynamic data includes all countries and another paragraph about how the country you watched fits or deviates from that story.
• Give a careful description of the story told by the animation for all 200 countries and how the story of just a single country fits into the larger world picture.
• Paste a screenshot from Gapminder of the final year in that single-country story using the Microsoft Word Template found under the Submit Your Assignment section.

Review each of the seven figures shown in the previous sections, choosing two about which to write a paragraph comparing the data display with Tuftes list of graphical excellence qualities

the two graphs are figure 4. Playfair Pie Chart [Playfair, 1805]- The following graph is a pie chart that was also created by William Playfair. Playfair included this graph in his 1805 translation of D. F. Donnants 1802 French text, titled Statistical Account of the United States of America.

 Playfair Bar Graph [Playfair, 1786]- historians of statistics consider William Playfair4 (1759-1823) to have been the first developer of many common statistical graphics used today, including the pie chart, the bar graph, and the statis- tical line graph. Through these inventions, he was able to create a universal common language that was used from science to commerce as a way to understand and look at data. The bar graph below is from his 1786 book entitled Commercial and Political Atlas. Playfair's intention in this book was to represent data about the import/export of many countries that were prominent in foreign commerce at the time. The atlas did not have much success in England but was very well received in France. Playfair reported in regard to King Louis XVI of France that "As his majesty made Geography a study, he at once understood the charts and was highly pleased. He said they spoke all languages and were very clear and easily understood (as quoted in [Spence and Wainer, 2001, p. 110]). The graph below is for the country of Scotland for one year. 5.1 Tufte's Principles of Graphical Excellence In the preface to the second edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte (1942- ) describes the genesis of the first edition as part of a seminar series with John Tukey (1915-2000) at Princeton University. Tukeys interest in "exploratory data analysis" focused on easy- to-construct (by hand after minimal arithmetic) displays of data to complement statistical analysis. Two such displays are still commonplace: the boxplot and the stem-and-leaf plot. In the 2001 edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte also repeats the nine qualities of graphical excellence from the groundbreaking 1983 edition [Tufte, 2001, p. 13]:  Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, preci- sion, and efficiency. Graphical displays should  show the data  induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else  avoid distorting what the data have to say  present many numbers in a small space  make large data sets coherent  encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data  reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure  serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration  be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set. Graphics reveal data. Indeed graphics can be more precise and revealing than conventional statistical computations.