Course Overview

This course explores contemporary techniques for visualizing the ubiquitous complex, dynamic systems— biological, socioeconomic, environmental, political, interpersonal, etc— that govern, or perhaps define, our lives. Through creating interactive visualizations that effectively model these systems, that facilitate explorations of the ways in which these systems interact with other, and that expose or emphasize salient aspects of their operations, we can begin to think more deeply about how to make sense of them and how to predict their behaviors. The course will be programming intensive. Students will be introduced to D3.js for data visualization and Three.js for real-time graphics rendering, and will use these JavaScript libraries to complete a series of short assignments as well as a more in-depth final project. Weekly readings will include seminal and recent articles on information visualization, immersive analytics, and network science.

Martin Wattenberg, The Shape of Song

Danny Holten, Hierarchical Edge Bundling