Course Syllabus - Summer C 2020

Data Visualization (CSE 578)

Course Description

Visual representations generated by statistical models help us to make sense of large, complex
datasets through interactive exploration, thereby enabling big data to realize its potential for
informing decisions. This course covers techniques and algorithms for creating effective
visualizations based on principles from graphic design, visual art, perceptual psychology, and
cognitive science to enhance the understanding of complex data.

Specific topics covered include:

● Data transformations
● Exploratory querying
● Statistical graphics
● Time series analysis
● Exploratory spatial data analysis

Learning Outcomes

Learners completing this course will be able to:

● Develop exploratory data analysis and visualization tools using Python and Jupyter
notebooks
● Apply design principles for a variety of statistical graphics and visualizations including
scatterplots, line charts, histograms, and choropleth maps
● Combine exploratory queries, graphics, and interaction to develop functional tools for
exploratory data analysis and visualization

Estimated Workload/ Time Commitment Per Week

Average of 20 hours per week

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Required Prior Knowledge and Skills

● Basic statistics and computer science knowledge including computer organization and
architecture, discrete mathematics, data structures, and algorithms
● Knowledge of high-level programming languages (e.g., C++, Java) and scripting
language (e.g., Python)

Technology Requirements

Hardware
Standard personal computer with major OS

Software and Other

Reliable WiFi
To complete course projects, the following application will be required: Jupyter Notebooks,
Python

Textbook and Readings

There is no required textbook for this course. Required course readings will be provided within
each week these are assigned.

Course Content

Instruction
Video Lectures
Other Videos
Readings
Live Events hosted by instructors
Virtual Office Hours hosted by Teaching Assistants

Assessments
Practice Quizzes (Autograded)
Graded Quizzes (Autograded)
Assignments (Autograded or Peer-Reviewed)
Team and/or Individual Project(s) (Course Team-Graded)
Midterm/Final Exam (Autograded)
Graded Discussions (Course Team-Graded)

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Details of the main instructional and assessment elements this course comprises follow:

Lecture videos: ​In each unit, the concepts you need to know are presented through a collection of
short video lectures. You may stream these videos for playback within the browser by clicking on
their titles or download the videos. You may also download the slides that go along with the videos.

Practice Quizzes and Knowledge Checks:​ Each unit includes one practice quiz, and each module
typically includes one knowledge check quiz to help you assess your understanding of the topics.
You are allowed unlimited attempts for each one. There is no time limit on how long you take to
complete each attempt at the quiz, and these quizzes are not counted toward your final grade in the
class.

Graded Quizzes: ​Each unit includes one graded quiz, comprising 10 questions. You are allowed
one attempt per quiz. ​There is no time limit on how long you take to complete your attempt at each
quiz.

Graded Discussion Prompts: ​Each unit includes one graded discussion prompt. The discussion
prompts can be found alongside other items in the lesson. Each prompt provides a space for you to
respond. After responding, you can see your peers’ responses, and are required to respond to at
least one classmate to receive full credit. All prompts and responses are also accessible from the
general discussion forum and the module discussion forum.

Readings:​ Some modules may include suggested readings. They are good supplementary
materials for you to further understand the course topics.

Proctored Exams: ​You have two (2) proctored exams - the Midterm and Final Exam. ​ProctorU is an
online proctoring service that allows students to take exams online while ensuring the integrity of the
exam for the institution. Additional information, instructions, and allowances are provided in Unit 1 of
the course.

Individual Assignments: ​There are six (6) individual assignments in this course. ​Late work will not
be accepted; failure to submit the assignment on time will result in a grade of 0%.

Team Project​: Teams will be assigned randomly the first week of class. You are expected to
collaborate with your teammates to complete a final project. The project consists of four (4) major
checkpoints that the course team will review and/or grade. ​Late work will not be accepted; failure to
submit a project component on time will result in a grade of 0% for that component.

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Course Grade Breakdown

Course Work Quantity Team or Percentage

Individual of Grade

Discussions (participation) 7 Individual 5%

Auto-graded quizzes 6 Individual 5%

Auto-graded assignment(s) 6 Individual 5%

Peer-review assignment(s) 7 Individual 5%

Major Project Milestone 1: Team Team 0%

Name

Milestone 2: Progress Team 0%

Report

Milestone 3: Executive Team 10%

Report

Milestone 4: Systems Team 10%

Documentation Report

Milestone 5: Individual Individual 20%

Contribution

Midterm Exam 1 Individual 20%

Final Exam 1 Individual 20%

Grade Scale
NOTE: You must earn a cumulative grade of 70% to earn a “C” in this course.

100-97: A+
96.9-93: A
92.9-90: A-
89.9 - 87: B+
86.9 - 83: B
82.9 - 80: B-
79.9 - 77: C+
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76.9 - 73: C
72.9 - 70: C-
69.9 - 67: D+
66.9 - 63: D
62.9 - 60: D-
59.9 - 0: E

Course Schedule

Live Events - Weekly ​(meet with the course instructors and your classmates to learn more about
course topics and discuss assignments):

● Tuesday from 10:00 am to 11:00 am AZ Time​ (check the Live Events page in the course
for your local time and access details)
● Wednesday from 2:00 pm to 3:00pm AZ Time​ ​(check the Live Events page in the course
for your local time and access details)

Please Note:
● These events will be recorded and uploaded to the course.
● All communication should remain professional at all times. Inappropriate content, language,
tone, etc., will not be tolerated and will be reported. This will also cause delays in us
supporting your learning and answering your questions.

Virtual Office Hours - Weekly ​(another chance to get your questions answered by the course
instructor and/or teaching assistants):

● Monday from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm AZ Time​ ​(check the Live Events page in the course for
your local time and access details)
● Thursday from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm AZ Time​ ​(check the Live Events page in the course for
your local time and access details)

Please Note:

● In Week 8, the final Virtual Office Hour will be on Monday, July 6th.
● All communication should remain professional at all times. Inappropriate content, language,
tone, etc., will not be tolerated and will be reported. This will also cause delays in us
supporting your learning and answering your questions.

Expectations for Virtual Office Hours: ​Although the course team is responsive to the trends in
discussion forums and mcsonline emails, these virtual office hours focus on addressing students'
specific questions related to content: clarifications, reteaching, assessment review, etc. These
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sessions are not intended to address program or course design feedback and teaching assistants do
not have the authority to weigh in or make decisions regarding those items, so please do not include
these during this time. These sessions are specific to helping students learn the material. Feedback
of that nature is best addressed in the communication channel: mcsonline@asu.edu and on course
surveys.

Unit Begin Date End Date

1: Introduction to Data Visualization May 18 May 24

2: Introduction to Statistical Graphics May 25 May 31

3: Multivariate Analysis June 1 June 7

Midterm Exam June 6 June 8

4: Temporal Analysis June 8 June 14

5: Geographical Data Analysis June 15 June 21

6: Hierarchical Data Analysis June 22 June 28

7: Additional Tools Used for Data Visualization June 29 July 5

Final Exam July 4 July 6

8: Final Wrap-Up July 6 July 10

Important Dates:

First day of class: May 18th

Midterm: June 6th - June 8th
Final Exam: July 4th - July 6th
Final Project Due: July 8th
Grades Due: July 12th

Assignment Deadlines
Unless otherwise noted, all graded work is due on​ Sunday,​ ​11:59 pm Arizona time​ ​for the week it
is assigned.​ Note that no late work is accepted.

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Course Outline with Assignments

Unit 1: Introduction to Data Visualization (5/18 - 5/24)

Lesson 1: Introduction to Data Visualization
Lesson 2: Introduction to Data Exploration Components
Lesson 3: Exploratory Querying and Visual Variables Used in Data Exploration and
Visualization

Assignments
​ eekly Graded Discussion
❏ W
❏ W​ eekly Quiz
❏ A ​ ssignment 1:
❏ ​Dino Fun World
❏ ​Assignment 1 Notebook
❏ ​Team Formation

Unit 2: Introduction to Statistical Graphics (5/25 - 5/31)

Lesson 1: Design Principles for the Most Widely Used Data Visualization Charts
Lesson 2: Design Principles for Box Charts and Q-Q Plots

Assignments
❏ ​Weekly Graded Discussion
❏ ​Weekly Quiz
❏ ​Assignment 2:
❏ ​Graphing Dino Fun World
❏ ​Assignment 2 Notebook
❏ ​Peer Review: Visualizations

Unit 3: Multivariate Analysis (6/1 - 6/7)

Lesson 1: Introduction to Multivariate Analysis
Lesson 2: Mosaic Plots and Pixel Based Displays
Lesson 3: Parallel Coordinate Plots
Lesson 4: Text Visualization
Lesson 5: Jupyter Notebook Demonstration
Lesson 5: Supervised Learning
Lesson 7: Unsupervised Learning

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Assignments
❏ ​Weekly Graded Discussion
❏ ​Weekly Quiz
❏ ​Assignment 3:
❏ ​Dino Fun World Analysis
❏ ​Assignment 3 Notebook
❏ ​Peer Review: Visualizations

Midterm Exam

Assignments
​ idterm Exam - Proctored
❏ M
❏ A​ vailable from​ 6/6 12:01 AM ​to​ 6/8 11:59 PM AZ time

Unit 4: Temporal Analysis (6/8 - 6/14)

Lesson 1: Introduction to Temporal Analysis and Visualization
Lesson 2: Strings and Sequences
Lesson 3: Edit Distance
Lesson 4: Introduction to W-Grams and Other Approaches
Lesson 5: Time Series
Lesson 6: Time Series Matching
Lesson 7: Time Series Motifs

Assignments
❏ ​Weekly Graded Discussion
❏ ​Weekly Quiz
❏ ​Assignment 4:
❏ ​Programming Assignment: Time Series Analysis
❏ ​Assignment 4 Notebook
❏ ​Peer Review: Visualizations

Unit 5: Geographical Data Analysis (6/15 - 6/21)

Lesson 1: Introduction to Geographical Data Analysis
Lesson 2: Choropleth Maps
Lesson 3: Spatial Statistics

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Lesson 4: Spatial Autocorrelation
Lesson 5: Spatial Scan Statistics
Lesson 6: Geovisual Analytics Systems

Assignments
❏ ​Weekly Graded Discussion
❏ ​Weekly Graded Quiz
❏ ​Assignment 5:
❏ ​Geographic Data Analysis
❏ ​Assignment 5 Notebook
❏ ​Peer Review: Visualization
❏ ​Course Project Checkpoint 1: Progress Report

Unit 6: Hierarchical Data Analysis (6/23 - 6/28)

Lesson 1: Trees and Hierarchies
Lesson 2: What is Hierarchical Clustering?

Assignments
❏ ​Weekly Graded Discussion
❏ ​Weekly Graded Quiz
❏ ​Assignment 6:
❏ ​Hierarchical Clustering
❏ ​Assignment 6 Notebook
❏ ​Peer Review: Dendrogram
❏ ​Project Checkpoint 2 & 3:
❏ ​Executive Report
❏ ​Systems Documentation Report

Unit 7: Additional Tools Used for Data Visualization (6/29 - 7/5)

Lesson 1: Tableau Basics
Lesson 2: Loading Data into Tableau
Lesson 3: Advanced Tableau
Lesson 4: Time Series Data Visualizations in Tableau
Lesson 5: Geographic Visualizations in Tableau
Lesson 6: Hierarchical Visualizations in Tableau

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Assignments
❏ ​Weekly Graded Discussion
❏ ​Weekly Graded Quiz
❏ ​Peer Review:
❏ ​Basic Tableau Visualization
❏ ​Advanced Plotting in Tableau
❏ ​Time Series Visualization in Tableau

Unit 8: Course Wrap-Up (7/6 - 7/10)

Assignments
❏ ​Final Exam - Proctored
❏ ​Available from ​7/4 12:01AM ​to​ 7/6 11:59PM AZ time
❏ ​Course Project: (​Due 7/8 11:59 PM AZ time​)
❏ ​Individual Contribution
❏ ​Optional: Portfolio Report for ASU MCS Degree
❏ ​Course Survey

Policies
All ASU and Coursera policies will be enforced during this course. For policy details, please
consult the​ ​MCS Graduate Handbook 2019 ​- 2020​ and/or the MCS Onboarding Course.

Academic Integrity
Students in this class must adhere to ASU’s academic integrity policy, which can be found at
https://provost.asu.edu/academic-integrity/policy​). Students are responsible for reviewing this
policy and understanding each of the areas in which academic dishonesty can occur. In
addition, all engineering students are expected to adhere to both the ASU Academic Integrity
Honor Code​ and the Fulton Schools of Engineering​ ​Honor Code​. All academic integrity
violations will be reported to the Fulton Schools of Engineering Academic Integrity Office (AIO).
The AIO maintains records of all violations and has access to academic integrity violations
committed in all other ASU college/schools.

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Plagiarism and Cheating
Plagiarism or any form of cheating on assignments, projects, or exams is subject to serious
academic penalty. To understand your responsibilities as a student read:​ ​ASU Student Code of
Conduct​ and​ ​ASU Student Academic Integrity Policy​.

There is a zero tolerance policy in this class: any violation of the academic integrity policies will
result in a zero on the assignment and the violation will be reported.

Examples of academic integrity violations include (​but are not limited to)​ :

● Sharing code with a fellow student (even if it is only a few lines).

● Collaborating on code with a fellow student.
● Submitting another student’s and/or other students’ code as your own.
● Submitting a prior student’s code and/or other students’ code as your own.

Posting your projects online is expressly forbidden, and will be considered a violation of the
academic integrity policy. Note that this includes working out of a public Github repo. The​ ​Github
Student Developer Pack​ provides unlimited private repositories while you are a student. If you
want to impress employers with your coding abilities, create an open-source project that is done
outside of class.

Title IX
Arizona State University is committed to providing an environment free of discrimination,
harassment, or retaliation for the entire university community, including all students, faculty
members, staff employees, and guests. ASU expressly prohibits discrimination, harassment,
and retaliation by employees, students, contractors, or agents of the university based on any
protected status: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age,
disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and genetic information.

Title IX is a federal law that provides that no person be excluded on the basis of sex from
participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education
program or activity. Both Title IX and university policy make clear that sexual violence and
harassment based on sex is prohibited. An individual who believes they have been subjected to
sexual violence or harassed on the basis of sex can seek support, including
counseling and academic support, from the university. If you or someone you know has been
harassed on the basis of sex or sexually assaulted, you can find information and resources at
https://sexualviolenceprevention.asu.edu/faqs​.
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Mandated sexual harassment reporter: As an employee of the University I am considered a
mandated reporter and therefore obligated to report any information regarding alleged acts of
sexual discrimination that I am informed of or have a reasonable basis to believe occurred.

ASU Counseling Services,​ ​https://eoss.asu.edu/counseling​, is available if you wish to discuss

any concerns
confidentially and privately.

Disclaimer
Information in the syllabus may be subject to change without advance notice.

Course Faculty

The following faculty members created this course.

Ross Maciejewski

Ross Maciejewski (Dr. Ross) is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University in the School
of Computing, Informatics & Decision Systems Engineering and Director of the Center for
Accelerating Operational Efficiency, a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence.
His primary research interests are in the areas of geographical visualization and visual analytics
focusing on public health, dietary analysis, social media, criminal incident reports, and the
food-energy-water nexus.

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Huan Liu

Professor Huan Liu joined ASU in 2000 after conducting research in Telecom (Telstra) Australia
Research labs and teaching at the National University of Singapore. He has extensive
experience in research and development. Liu’s research and teaching focuses on machine
learning, data mining, and real world applications.

Selcuk Candan

K. Selcuk Candan is a professor of computer science and engineering at Arizona State

University and the director of ASU’s Center for Assured and Scalable Data Engineering
(CASCADE). His primary research interest is in the area of management and analysis of
non-traditional, heterogeneous, and imprecise (such as multimedia, web, and scientific) data.

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