Data visualizations can inform, explain, and sway public opinion and policy decisions. This course imparts design thinking and data ethics frameworks, along with practical software skills, to construct and present data visually. Students work on iterative coding, design, and feedback exercises to develop visual communication acumen for conveying insights uncovered by descriptive and statistical data analysis to illuminate public policy issues through visual storytelling.
A core goal is learning to program in Python—by effectively prompting AI assistants to generate as well as debug code—to build an automated streaming pipeline for data to flow from the source into visualization with minimal manual maintenance. Students will create projects powered by a technical infrastructure for acquiring, cleaning, analyzing, and visualizing self-updating information dashboards. Although no previous knowledge of programming is required, students should have either taken DPI-851M Introduction to Data and Information Visualization or accumulated substantial data skills in their past academic or professional experiences.
