The amount and complexity of information produced in science, engineering, business, and everyday human activity is increasing at staggering rates. The goal of this course is to expose you to visual representation methods and techniques that increase the understanding of complex data. Visualization for data discovery and communication is an important part of the data science pipeline. Good visualizations not only present a visual interpretation of data, but do so by improving comprehension, communication, and decision making.

In this course you will learn about the fundamentals of perception, the theory of visualization, good design practices for visualization, and how to develop your own web-based visualizations using HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, SVG, and D3.

The course begins by bootstrapping your web development skills, moves on to fundamentals of perception, introduces data types you will encounter, and then focuses on visualization techniques and methods for a broad range of data types. An integral component of the course are regular design critiques and redesigns that will hone your skills in understanding, critiquing and developing visualization techniques.

The course is offered in the fall term 2024 at the University of Utah in three variants: CS-5630 and DS-4630 for undergraduate computer science and data science students, respectively; and CS-6630 for graduate students.

Instructor

Paul Rosen, Associate Professor, Kalhert School of Computing
E-Mail: paul.rosen@utah.edu (please do not send me canvas messages)
Office: WEB 4887 (please come during office hours or schedule an appointment)

See the schedule for office hours.

Teaching Assistants

Rifat Ara Proma (preferred name: Proma), PhD student, Visualization / Computer Science
Md Dilshadur Rahman (preferred name: Dilshadur), PhD student, Visualization / Computer Science
Syed Fahim Ahmed (preferred name: Fahim), PhD student, Visualization / Computer Science

See the schedule for office hours.

Logistics

Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday 2:00–3:20 pm, James Fletcher Building, Room 103
Grades: Canvas
Discussion: Slack – please join with your uid@utah.edu address and use your real name.

Previous Versions of this Class

If you want to look ahead in the class (in particular regarding slides) you can browse previous versions of the class:

Utah DS-4630/CS-5630/CS-6630 2023
Utah DS-4630/CS-5630/CS-6630 2022
Utah CS-5630/CS-6630 2020
Utah CS-5630/CS-6630 2019
Utah CS-5630/CS-6630 2018
Utah CS-5630/CS-6630 2017
Utah CS-5630/CS-6630 2016