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Assignment4

Assignment 4. Database-- with Lisa Strausfeld.
(All students: Required.)

The Assignment

Create a visualization from world factbook data or U.S. public opinion polls. Your objective can range from enabling a deep understanding of the data, to correlating the data with another source, or encoding the data in an abstract form to convey some type of meaning.

If you choose to focus on enabling an understanding of the data, consider creating a scatterplot visualization. There’s more information about scatterplots below. In keeping with the previous assignments, you could also constrain your visualization to a typographic solution and add some form of interactivity. Another option is to create some kind of pattern or more abstract visual form that is encoded with data.

A first step for any of these approaches is to spend some significant time with the data, looking for patterns and irregularities.

The Data

World Factbook
All students have access to the CIA World Factbook online (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/) and in an Excel file. In addition, Dan may set up a SQL database and show you how to access the data using PHP.

The Gallup Brain
The Gallup Organization has been conducting public opinion polls for over 70 years. Much of that data is available online at http://brain.gallup.com. You will have to register for a 30 day free login to have full access. I just learned from my contact at Gallup that the Gallup Brain does provide a way to export trended data as a CSV file. Follow these steps:

1. Go to brain.gallup.com
2. Search within: Questionnaires. Select a keyword to search for – for instance, Saudi Arabia. Click Search.
3. Select an interesting question – say, qn26u “Next, I'd like your overall opinion of some foreign countries. First, is your overall opinion of Saudi Arabia -- very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable?”
4. On the right side of the screen, in the Create a Trend box, click Locate Questions.
5. Select the questions you want, or click Select All. Then click Create Trend.
6. Click Create a CSV File.
7. Copy/Paste to your data visualization tool.

Scatterplots

The "scatterplot” is also referred to as a dot, symbol, or point graph. A scatterplot displays points in a two (or three) dimensional field. These types of plots are typically used to correlate two sets of data (e.g. dollars spent and dollars earned) and conclusions are drawn based on how the points are clustered.

It’s possible to take a broader and looser view of the scatterplot, however, and not focus so much on the goal of correlation of points. In scatterplots, the points themselves can have communicative power, even if there is little correlation in the group. The points can be any type of graphical objects, including text, with a variety of visual attributes that map to attributes of the data.

There are many ways to approach this, but here are a couple. You could start by collecting the data programmatically or by hand. Either way it’s important to look at it carefully. Excel is a great tool for this. At the same time, start thinking about what your points/objects are, what attributes they will have, and what kind of field you will put them in. Depending on what you’re interested in discovering and revealing in the data, start ranking your attributes in order of priority. You may decide that you really want your points to be graphically represented by scaling text or that you want to work with physical properties of attraction between objects. Or you may want to work with a geographical field. These formal decisions will help you focus on your information/data in a particular way.

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