Week 2: Data Visualization Fundamentals

Content for lectures 2A and 2B

  View materials:   MUSA-550-Fall-2023/week-2

  HTML slides:   Lecture 2A   Lecture 2B

  Executable slides:   Lecture 2A   Lecture 2B

Topics

• Color fundamentals and available tools
• Introduction to matplotlib, seaborn, and altair

Recommended Readings

• Guide to getting started with matplotlib
• Plotting & visualization chapter of Python for Data Analysis
  • A good introduction to plotting with matplotlib, pandas, and seaborn
• Altair:
  • Introduction to Statistical Visualization
  • Interactive charts with altair
  • Exploring Seattle Weather: A Case Study
• Data viz design: Introductory slides of London’s design guidelines

Documentation

• matplotlib
  • Example plots
  • Plot types
• seaborn docs homepage
• Seaborn tutorial
  • Visualizing statistical relationships
  • Categorical data
  • Visualizing the distribution of a data set
  • Visualizing linear relationships
• altair
  • The user guide
  • Example gallery

Other Readings

• Remaking Historical Data Viz
• Modern Statistical Atlas
• A 6-part blog series on W. E. B. Du Bois’ Data Visualization
• Data Sketches
• The 7 Kinds of Data Visualization People
• Fast vs Slow Data Visualization
• What Charts Say
• Color Guide and Overview of Color Tools
• The Importance of Grey
• 2017 PyCon presentation by Jake VanderPlas
• Interview with John Burn-Murdoch about his COVID Data Viz

Color Resources

• ColorBrewer 2.0
• Viz Palette
• Adobe Color CC
• Colorpicker for data
• Chroma.js Color Scale Helper
• Choosing Color Maps in Matplotlib
• Choosing Color Palettes in seaborn
• Names of available color maps in Altair