Introduction to Digital Humanities

Data Visualization


Histography.io by Matan Stauber, embeded above, visualizes "14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015. The site draws historical events from Wikipedia and self-updates daily with new recorded events.The interface allows for users to view between decades to millions of years.The viewer can choose to watch a variety of events which have happened in a particular period or to target a specific event in time. For example you can look at the past century within the categories of war and inventions" (http://cargocollective.com/matanstauber/Histography).

This week we will examine some of the promises and pitfalls of communicating humanities research in the visual mode.

Annotation #6

1. Yau, Nathan. Data Points: Visualization That Means Something. Indianapolis, IN: John Wiley and Sons, 2013. Chapter 3. Hypothesis link.

2. Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 5, no. 1 (2011). Hypothesis link.

Assignment #6

Use the dataset that you cleaned in the last assignment from the Powerhouse Museum to build a simple data visualization with Tableau, Raw Graphs, or Morph doing your best to adhere to the principles Nathan Yau lays out in Data Points.  Embed your visualization on your "Assignment #6" page and discuss what your visualization tells you that you couldn’t see from the data itself, and why you selected a particular visualization tool. Be sure to follow the instructions on the "Assignment" page of our workbook to make sure that it shows up in the contents of your personal page and the "Assignment #6" page. 

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