Course Schedule

The schedule below is a tentative outline of our plans for the semester.

For each class period, please start by reviewing the associated Learning Goals, review/finish the daily activity (turn in by deadline), and watch/read the indicated videos/readings to supplement your understanding.


Week 1
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
1/19 1 Intro to R, RStudio, and R Markdown

Readings:
Introduction to R Markdown, by Wickham and Grolemund
Tidy Data (12.1, 12.2), by Wickham and Grolemund
Videos:
Setting up for success in the course, by Lisa Lendway
Introduction to RStudio, by Alicia Johnson
Check version of R and RStudio, by Lisa Lendway
RStudio tour, by Lisa Lendway
R Markdown introduction, by Lisa Lendway
Finish Assignment 0 (Due Tuesday/Thursday, January 24/26 at 11:59pm).
Finish Assignment 1 (Due Thursday, January 26 at 11:59pm).
Week 2
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
1/24 Community Building Scavenger Hunt
1/26 2 Introduction to Data Visualization

Set up NY Times Subscription (Free to you through Macalester)

Tidy Tuesday

Readings:
Data visualization, by Wickham and Grolemund
Layered grammar of graphics, by Wickham and Grolemund
A grammar for graphics (Chp 3), by Baumer, Kaplan, and Horton
Aesthetic mapping (Chp 2), by Wilke
Visualizing distributions (Chp 7), by Wilke
Telling a Story (Chp 29), by Wilke

Videos:
Intro to ggplot , by Lisa Lendway
Finish Assignment 2 (Due Thursday, February 2 at 11:59pm).
Week 3
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
1/31 3 Effective Viz

Example Code

Readings:
Equity Awareness for Data Visualizations, by Urban Institute
Telling a story (Chp 29), by Wilke
2/2 4 Bivariate Viz

Readings:
Visualizing amounts (Chp 6), by Wilke

Videos:
ggplot demo, Lisa Lendway
Common ggplot mistakes, Lisa Lendway
Finish Assignment 3 (Due Thursday, February 9 at 11:59pm)
Week 4
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
2/7 Meet in the IDEA lab in the Library 5 Multivariate Viz

Idea Lab Activity
Readings:
Visualize This (Chp 7), by Yau

Videos:
More ggplot, Lisa Lendway
9/21 6 Spatial Viz

Readings:
Visualize This (Chp 8), by Yau
Spatial data visualization (Chp 17, intro and 17.1), by Baumer et al.

Videos:
Plotting data on a map with ggmap, Lisa Lendway
Glamour of graphics, Will Chase (slides here
Finish Assignment 5 (due 2/16) and Assignment 6 (due 2/16)
Week 5
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
2/14 7 Six Main Verbs

Readings:
Data transformation, by Wickham and Grolemund
Data wrangling on one table, by Baumer, Kaplan, and Horton

Videos:
Intro to dplyr, Lisa Lendway
Demonstration of dplyr, Lisa Lendway
2/16 8 Reshaping Data

Readings:
Pivoting and narrow v. wide formats, by Wickham and Grolemund
Reshaping data, by Baumer, Kaplan, and Horton

Videos:
Demonstration of pivoting, Lisa Lendway
Finish Assignment 7 (due 2/23) and Assignment 8 (due 2/23)
Week 6
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
2/21 9 Joining

Accessibilty Survey
Readings:
Relational data, by Wickham and Grolemund
Data wrangling on multiple table, by Baumer, Kaplan, and Horton

Videos:
Demonstration of joining data, Lisa Lendway
2/23 Snow Days: Virtual Office Hours (NO CLASS)
Finish at least one Tidy Tuesday (due 2/23) and Iterative Viz (due 2/23)
Finish Assignment 9 (due 3/2)
Week 7
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
2/28 10 Factors

Readings:
Factors, by Wickham and Grolemund
Videos:
Working with factors using forcats, Lisa Lendway
3/2 MSCS CAPSTONES (NO CLASS)
Visit two Capstone talks and complete MSCS Capstone Summary (due 3/7)
Finish Assignment 10 (due 3/7)
Week 8
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
3/7 Midterm Review
3/9 Midterm Workday
Take home Midterm available on Moodle (due Friday, 3/10)
SPRING BREAK - NO CLASS 3/13 - 3/17
Week 10
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
3/21 11 Accessible Visualizations

3/23 12 Data Import

Readings:
Data import, by Wickham and Grolemund
Missing data, by Wickham and Grolemund
Data intake, by Baumer, Kaplan, and Horton

Videos:
Using the import wizard, Lisa Lendway
Iterative Visualization 1 (due 3/23)
Finish Assignment 11 (due 3/30)
Finish Assignment 12 (due 3/30)
Week 11
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
3/28 13 EDA

Readings:
Exploratory Data Analysis, by Wickham and Grolemund
Exploratory Data Analysis Checklist, by Peng
3/30 Project Brainstorm
Finish Assignment 11 and Assignment 12 (due 3/30) Finish Project Survey (due 4/4). Finish Assignment 13 (due 4/6).
Week 12
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
4/4 14 Regular Expressions

Reading:
Strings, by Wickham and Grolemund
Regular expressions, by Baumer, Kaplan, and Horton

Tutorials and tools:
Working with strings, by Lisa Lendway
RegExplain RStudio addin by Garrick Aden-Buie
regexr exploration tool
4/6 Project Narrow Focus

Communicating with Data
If you would like to use Github for collaboration on the project, here are some resources
github video tutorial, Lisa Lendway
Instructions that accompany the video tutorial above
Happy Git with R by Jenny Bryan
Finish Assignment 14 (due 4/13).
Week 13
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
4/11 Oral & Written Communications

4/13 Written Communication: Peer Review of One Number Story

Rough Draft of One Number Story (Assignment 15) due before class.
Final Draft of One Number Story (Assignment 15) due 4/20.
Data Visualization due before class (4/18)
Week 14
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
4/18 Present Data Vizualization & Critique

Data Visualization due before class
4/20 Project Work

Continue working on projects
Course Evaluation
Week 15
Date Activity Topic & Assignments Optional Readings/Videos
4/25 Storyboarding

4/27 Project Progress Reports

Tidy Tuesday 2 and 3 and Iterative Visualization 2 due April 27 Final Project Presentations on Thursday, May 4, 8-10am