Data Vis for Journalists Fall 2016, Lab 3

• Week 3 Demo 1 Stone Color workbook
  • Instructions PDF
• Week 3 Demo 2 Intro to Maps workbook

Downloads:

• Drought Small Multiples instructions PDF

• Both parts of this assignment are to be done in groups of two; you may choose partners yourselves, but pair with somebody different than last week.

• Drought and Deluge assignment, following the instructions in the PDF file
  • Check out the original New York Times piece on Drought and Deluge in the Lower 48
  • Start a new Tableau workbook
  • Connect the drought data TSV (tab-separated values) source to your workbook
  • Pivot the data and create a calculated field to parse the date.
  • Create the initial view and rearrange the ordering.
  • Build the trellis of views, using more calculated fields.

• Analysis and story construction with your choice of dataset
  • Pick a dataset from the list that is the most interesting to you and analyze it visually with Tableau. Load the data into Tableau and explore it. Create several worksheets to explore your data and keep track of the questions that you come up with.
  • Your goal is to create several visualizations that answer at least three interesting questions. Pick your visualization types based on the kinds of questions you are answering, as discussed in the Tasks section on the first day (for example comparison, trend, distribution, correlation, and so on). Pay attention to whether your visual encodings are effective.
  • Available Datasets:
    • Movies.csv (87KB)
    • BestSchools2012.csv (24KB)
    • WagesIndustry.xlsx (8.8MB)
    • AirlineDelayCauses.xlsx (14MB)
    • Ft-Lauderdale-Restaurant-Inspections.xlsx (3.3MB)
  • Write up your findings as a news story. Also write up your reflections on your analysis process as a separate document.
    • Your news story should be under 500 words and can include up to 5 images created with Tableau. You are not expected to use any other material than your Tableau analysis findings.
    • In the reflections document, explicitly describe your analysis process and include screenshots of all the charts that you created, including dead ends that you deemed to be not newsworthy. Provide a rigorous rationale for your design decisions. Document the visual encodings you used to spatially arrange the data and discuss whether those choices are appropriate for the data. How did your decision of which visualizations were suitable to use in your story facilitate effective communication? Try to apply the design principles discussed in class so far. Also include (at least) one paragraph about the process you used to do the exploration and analysis in Tableau. Did anything limit or frustrate you? If nothing did, perhaps there was something that was more difficult than you thought it should be.

• Submit both completed workbooks, and the news story and reflection (as separate documents) in PDF format. Send by email to tmm AT cs.ubc.ca and caitlin AT discoursemedia.org by 9am Oct 4, with subject "JOURN Week 3".

• The Intro to Maps workbook is courtesy of Ben Jones, with minor tweaks to the instructions to clarify ambiguities and update for Tableau 10. Ben is Director of Product Marketing for Tableau Public, author of Communicating Data with Tableau, and instructor at the University of Washington.
• The Stone Color workbook is based on a lecture/demo at the Tableau Customer Conference 2014 from Maureen Stone of Tableau Research from her talk Seriously Colorful: Advanced Color Principles & Practices. Stone is the author of A Field Guide to Digital Color.
• The New York Times Drought example is based on an exercise developed by Robert Kosara of Tableau Research from his talk Recreating News Visualizations in Tableau at the 2014 Tableau Customer Conference.