EH 315: Professional Writing and Data Visualization

Data and its visualization can be manipulated to achieve a desired result. This means:

• There are layers of meaning to any data visualization.
• Visual cues such as font, color, and organization, can affect understanding and perceived validity.
• The form of the data’s input affects what can be done with the data at the creation stage.
• Bias can affect how data is interpreted.
• Data must be viewed in context.

Business Insider

Notice the random months, the y-axis starting at 150,000, and the fact that annual apprehensions have decreased substantially since 2018.

Do these numbers correspond to the line lengths?

Old Street Solutions

Data visualization is information, and information has monetary value, so:

• Financial success is determined by access to and an understanding of information.
• The way information is visualized, and the information, itself, may be presented to monetarily reward one social group over another.
• Information in the form of data is the foundation for automated decision making. Automated decision-making is the next wave of technology innovation, but the ability to build models that are meaningful is limited by an individual’s ability to understand the meaning of both a model and its output. A data visualization can be made to fit any model with enough manipulation.  

Mapping Inequality: Birmingham

Using this chart, what areas are considered "Best" and more likely to attract home buyers?

Content is culture- and community-based; therefore:

• Prior knowledge can be necessary to visualization interpretation.
• Visual cues can affect attitudes toward the data representation and interpretation
• Social information is explicitly or implicitly revealed in the way the visualization is presented.
• The meaning of content may drift when the content is experienced outside of the original creator’s frame.

Rigorous Themes

What are wickets? what is a death over? what is odis? what's an ave?

Data visualization tells a story.

• Visualization can reinforce previous knowledge or be used as a rhetorical device.
• Visualization is a form of multimodal rhetoric, combining visual, data, and information tools to produce a message.

Storytelling with data

Each  set of data relies on the data above it. Having the reasons next to the proposal means the reader doesn't have to hunt to find them.