Talk:Data Visualization

Length: The length of your article is roughly 3,090 words which is within the assignment instructions. Structure: The structure of your article is good. There is an opening paragraph that summarizes the issue; however, I believe that you can touch a little more on the actual issues at hand. Possibly somewhere in the second paragraph when you are talking about what goes into scientist’s decisions. You bring up how they must consider the audience and how the data will influence people but I believe that giving a little more depth into the issue at hand with those 2 things would be good. From there you progress logically through explaining the relevant terminology and techniques. You also split the sub-sections into categories that make sense to the reader. One thing that I was possibly thinking about was including “Femicides in Mexico”, “A Sort of Joy”, and “On Love & Data” in their own category. I feel as if those are more examples/implementations of data visualization that solve an Ethical Dilemma, not explanations of the ethical dilemmas surrounding data visualization. I also believe that you can make a small but strong paragraph to summarize the section and solidify to your audience that data visualization has a real impact on today’s world. All of your statements clearly show that you did your research, and after looking through your references illustrate that you got your information from reputable sources. Clarity: The issue at stack is made very clear in the “Ethical Dilemmas” section. I especially found The God Trick to be very interesting as I had never heard about it before. You gave a well-informed history of where data visualization actually comes from, illustrating inherent biases throughout history. Personally I think that your “Techniques” section is very interesting and you explain the differences between different types of data very well, also opening the reader’s eyes to Data Art which is very unique and, to my knowledge, not well known about. Also, in “Ethical Dilemmas” you go over a plethora of ethical issues ranging from hierarchical power and a lack of diversity to language’s impact on perspective. It’s very thorough and gives the reader a good overview of the issues at hand. If I had to give one critique, it would be to include some more sources in the Language section instead of just using the one source at the end. Other than that, I think doing what I referenced above and making the examples its own section would add a bit of clarity since those subtopics go beyond the scope of the section. It will also help with the flow of the article towards the end. Other than that, I think that the information presented is very clear and what the ethical issues surrounding data visualization are and how they affect our life. Objective: At no point in reading your article did I feel that you were attempting to sway the audience one way or another. Everything was very informative and had a clear lack of bias. I think some good next steps for you would be to give it 1 or 2 more read-throughs and read for flow and grammatical errors before we submit it on Friday. Not to say that there was bad flow or a ton of grammatical issues - just to check and make sure that everything is good. Other than that, very well done on the article!