Month: February 2018

Looking at the relationship between these statistics and my own internal memories of the last two weeks, I am not too surprised by what I see. I think one thing that is funny is that the two days where I watched the most content and used the most battery percentage were Sundays, which are my laziest days of the week. I can definitely remember having movie days ALL day on both those Sundays! Some things I didn’t expect were how the rest of the weeks were organized pretty randomly for the most part. I thought the first week I recorded data would have much bigger numbers because I didn’t have many assignments due and wasn’t very busy. The second week I was recording data was much busier for me, but you can’t really tell that from my data! I guess that I am always able to make time to watch content online, not that this is always a good thing because it makes me procrastinate more than I should!!

I am confident in saying what I think this data means. I believe it shows me what days I had the most free time (or possibly procrastinated the most). By showing me how much battery percentage I used while streaming this content, it makes me realize how much energy I actually use in a day. I think it’s good to be aware of this, because we have to charge our devices to have this much power and to actually use the energy. From the reading, “Artist Turns a Year’s Worth of Tracking Data Into a Haunting Record,” the author says, “…data can give us entirely new ways to look at our lives.” I believe this is absolutely true, every little thing we do can be tracked and turned into data. When we analyze this information, we can find patterns, numbers, and trends in our lives that we might not otherwise see. I think there is relatively little that data could not tell us about our lives. If I were to continue tracking this data for the rest of the year, or for the next couple years, I think I could learn a lot about how I stream content and when this occurs.  Also, if I were to do this again I would definitely keep a much more detailed track of my data, such as including which device I was streaming on, which app I was watching content on, and the time of day that I was watching. This would give me an even more in depth visual story.

I wanted to make my infographic easy to read and understand, so I went for simplicity. I used the colors red, white and blue for my visual in honor of the Olympics which I have been watching a lot this week! I really liked the donut pie chart visual to show the number of minutes of content watched and battery percentage used while doing so. I used the website RawGraphics to make this graphic. I was able to include the date under each circle too which was able to help show which date and day of the week I watched the most or the least content. I think it’s very aesthetically pleasing how the circles get bigger and smaller depending on how much content I watched. I created all other elements besides my graph on the website Piktochart. It was really easy to use, and helped me simplify my visual. I think the key is a big part in telling the story of my data. I liked the simple little symbols that were available, I believe it really conveyed the different elements of my data well. I felt the font I chose fit well with the colors I used, it’s not too harsh but is unique enough to stand out. Overall, although my visual and my story is pretty simple, I think you can learn a lot about my lifestyle from the data and this visualization.

If all of the powers of ten were written out in a sequence on a spreadsheet, I know that my mind would be blown! Knowing how to work with powers of ten in a math problem compared to actually being able to grasp the reality of what it means are two totally different things. I’ve also had a hard time grasping math concepts visually, so this video gave me a new perspective. Actually being able to see what multiple powers of ten look like in real life in the YouTube video greatly helped me grasp an understanding of what powers of ten mean.

What do these three sources have to say about some of the positives, negatives, and challenges of visualizing data?

From the reading “The Trouble with Timelines,” one of the challenges of Priestly’s timelines was that his was hard to understand with how little context there was behind it. One positive about this though was that he set the stage for timelines to come in the future. The idea that time could be shown visually caught on with a lot of people. Because we can’t touch or feel time, a lot of people liked the way something like this could be visualized. The biggest negative from this source was that time was never shown in a visual linear fashion before, and it was almost too simple. Bergson said that Priestly’s timeline was a “deceiving idol.” A negative to Sterne’s timeline was that it became too elaborate and complicated. They didn’t have the means of technology to make it simple and easy to read back then, so scrolls were 54 feet long with lots of information. This wasn’t easy to edit or change either. I think with our advanced technology now, timelines are much more useful and can help us visually grasp time.

As for the reading “The Mapping of Massacres,” one of the positives from this is that it brings awareness to a controversial subject. It shows evidence, and not opinion. When you hear about something you may think, “Oh that’s really sad,” but then the information doesn’t really stick with you. But when you see an actual visualization of something, it resonates much deeper and stays with you. I believe this is the case in this reading, and that there were mostly good things that came out of this visualization.

The quote “Literacy in information analysis requires a willingness to grapple with data in all its untidy forms, including missing, incomplete, and contradictory entries. [This] involves moving through layers of abstraction, using visualization to summarize, and drilling down to the supporting information structures. Good tools…must always include ways to view the underlying assumptions, to visualize and examine alternative interpretations, and to expose the degree of uncertainty,” from Maureen Stone reminds me most of the Powers of Ten YouTube video. When we think about this idea, it is nearly impossible to understand what it means from our standpoint. But when we have a visualization of it, we are more willing to understand what it means and put more effort into analyzing things from this point of view. We can assume what our view would be from 10^7 meters away, but actually being able to see the real view point can broaden our perspectives and help us learn more precisely.