Cohort 1

Spot and avoid data fallacies, recognize biases, and create more truthful visualizations through use cases, hands-on activities, and more.

Enrico Bertini

Rhetorical Data Visualization for Data Professionals

As a data professional, you have learned to use tools, crunch numbers, develop attractive charts or dashboards, and create engaging presentations. But how do you know if your conclusions are right? What if, after all this effort, your conclusions are weak or even plain wrong? Data visualization can make data persuasive for your audience and for yourself—very persuasive! So much so that you may not realize that your thinking does not hold water upon closer scrutiny. Unfortunately, learning software tools, programming languages, design strategies, or presentation skills do not shield you from making reasoning mistakes. You may have heard of or learned to recognize some statistical fallacies, but you may lack a coherent and cohesive framework to think about reasoning fallacies in data visualization systematically. This is what I aim to provide you with Rhetorical Data Visualization (RhetVis). RhetVis aims to make you a real data detective who can identify reasoning gaps and provide solutions when assessing and designing new data visualizations for yourself and others. Using the RhetVis framework, you can identify and solve issues with 1) how data is collected/generated, 2) how data values are computed, transformed, and visualized, and 3) how data visualizations are framed using titles and other contextual elements. WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT RhetVis includes five modules:1. Introduction: Become familiar with the RhetVis framework.2. Data-reality gaps: Spot gaps in how the data has been generated.3. Data transformation: Spot issues with data selection, filtering, aggregation, etc.4. Visual representation: Spot problems with how the data is represented.5. Contextual factors: Become mindful of the framing effect of titles and other elements. Each week, we cover two modules for a total of three weeks of work. Each module includes:- 45-60 min recorded video lectures: Learn the basics of each module.- Lecture slides: Quickly review the course content.- Quizzes: Test your knowledge, spot comprehension gaps, and obtain clarifications.- 1.5 hours of live meetings: Discuss the main ideas and develop practical skills through group activities (using breakout rooms) and presentations.- Printable cheat sheets: Quickly review and recall the main elements of the RhetVis framework.- Reading material and resources: to dive deeper into the topics covered. The course also includes a final mini-project to develop individually and present to the group on the final day of the course. The course does not require any specific data processing or visualization tool. We will use Google Docs/Slides and drawing tools (paper, digital drawing apps, etc.). WHO WILL BENEFIT MOST FROM THIS COURSE - Data analysts and scientists who want to get stronger at reasoning with data visualization- Visualization designers who know how to build engaging/beautiful/effective visualizations but lack the skills to evaluate the validity of their data arguments- Data enthusiasts who want to become more skilled at critically evaluating the visualizations they encounter in the world WHO THIS IS NOT FOR If your main goal is to learn specific data visualization tools (Tableau, Power BI, etc.), specific programming languages, or how to create pretty/engaging visuals, this is not the course for you. The course is also inadequate for people who want to work at their own pace and are not interested in interacting with others. The live meetings require everyone to be active and engage in discussions, conversations, and collaborative work.

Avoid being fooled or fooling others with data

Data analysts and data scientists who want to avoid reasoning fallacies with data and data visualizations.

Visualization designers who want to avoid misleading or confusing their readers.

Data enthusiasts who want to become better data thinkers and avoid being misled by data visualizations.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

When you look at a visualization, how do you know if you can trust its message? Thinking critically means learning to assess the validity of a data visualization message and spot limitations and fallacies. We will review, discuss, and assess many data visualizations together.

Think critically about visualizations and their messages.

We often take data at face value, but problems with data often start when the data is collected. You'll learn a systematic way to spot gaps between data and the reality it represents. We will conduct specific hands-on activities to spot the gaps learned in the lecture.

Spot and correct gaps between data and the reality it represents.

Before data is visualized, it always goes through some selections and transformations. How do these decisions affect the validity of a visualization? What kind of fallacies can these choices generate? We will conduct hands-on activities to learn how to spot the fallacies.

Detect and avoid interpretation fallacies in data selection and transformation.

Have you ever noticed that the same data can be visualized in many different ways? How do you decide which way works best? You'll learn to reason about the effect of design choices. We will design alternative representations of exactly the same data to analyze their effect.

Dissect visualizations into their individual parts and identify the elements that impact their interpretation.

There is so much focus on the graphical part of data visualization, but how about the contextual elements, such as titles and annotations? You'll learn to think about bias and framing. We will design alternative titles and annotations to evaluate their effect.

Assess bias and framing effects from titles and annotations.

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First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

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Meet your instructor

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Tuesdays & Thursdays

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May 7, 2022

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Weekly projects

Course schedule

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Active hands-on learning

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Interactive and project-based

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

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