CZ4124 Data Visualisation

Course Summary

Course explores ways of effectively visualising data. Although tutorials and implementation is all done in Python, most of the things learned are conceptual (eg. how humans associate/group items together etc.) Topics are a lot more in depth than just simple bar plots and graphs, and include using interactive visualisations and abstract methods like geospatial and text visualisations.

Workload

Workload is fairly light for most of the semester, this mod is more project heavy. There is a 2 hour tutorial and a one hour lecture, but lectures are recorded and Prof Goh usually ended tutorials within 90mins or so.

Projects

The main project for this mod is a 10 min presentation, where the task is to perform visualisations on a self-chosen topic, going through data exploration and analysis. Code is not graded, so most of the weight goes towards applying human/HCI concepts in the visualisations and bringing the audience through a cohesive journey that explains the story of the data well. During covid, this was a recorded video presentation.

There is also a graded peer review, where you have to critique two classmates' presentations. This is graded based on knowledge of visual concepts.

Things to take note of

Note that this is not a very code/programming heavy mod. In terms of graded items, most of the weight rests on knowing concepts about human visual perception. If you like design, and designing intuitive graphics, then you would probably find this mod quite fun. But if you didn't enjoy CZ2004 HCI, then this may not be a great choice.

Conclusion

Overall, you would learn a lot of good skills about data presentation, which are all very important.Many of these concepts can be easily picked up from reading up online/youtube videos too though.