Principles of Data Visualization

As scientists, we often need to share a large amount of information in one figure. It can be difficult to create a compelling figure which does not become weighed down by the amount of information it is trying to communicate. This course aims to introduce students to the principles of good visualizations. Students will examine real life examples from papers and news sources of data visualizations that are “good” and “bad”. This course will overview how different kinds of plots are suited for certain types of data (eg, bar plot vs violin plot? Pie chart versus stacked bars?), how to select an appropriate color palette, and use additional plot features to convey additional information. The course will highlight important aspects of publication-ready figures, but not focus on this point. This course will use the book “Fundamentals of Data Visualization” by Claus O. Wilke, which is freely available online here: https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/index.html in addition to real life biological examples. Students are not required to have coding knowledge for this course, and students will not be taught to code in this course. However, example code for different types of plots will be included for self-study, and students with coding knowledge can use this for the course and request additional assistance.