DTS 4132 units400 LevelFirst Semester

Data Visualization for Data-driven Decision Making

B.Sc. Data Science, University of Uyo

The theory and craft of visual communication: perception, encoding, chart selection, dashboard design and narrative. How an analysis becomes a decision.

On Areté, DTS 413 comes with

  • 3 recommended textbooks
  • an AI tutor that has read this course’s outline and notes
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Course outline

  1. 01Why visualisation works: visual perception, pre-attentive attributes and cognitive load
  2. 02The grammar of graphics: data, aesthetic mappings, geometries, scales, facets
  3. 03Choosing an encoding: position, length, angle, area, colour, shape — and their accuracy ranking
  4. 04Chart selection for comparison, distribution, composition, relationship and trend
  5. 05Colour: sequential, diverging and categorical palettes; colour-blind-safe design
  6. 06Common distortions: truncated axes, dual axes, misleading area, cherry-picked ranges
  7. 07Dashboard design: layout, hierarchy, interactivity and the audience's question
  8. 08Interactive and web visualisation: Plotly, Dash/Streamlit, D3 concepts
  9. 09Data storytelling: narrative structure, annotation and the single message per chart

Recommended textbooks

  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information — Edward R. Tufte

    2nd ed. — the foundational text; still the best

  • Fundamentals of Data Visualization — Claus O. Wilke

    Free at clauswilke.com/dataviz; the most practical modern guide

  • Storytelling with Data — Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

    On the communication half; short and immediately applicable

How to pass DTS 413

  • Learn the accuracy ranking of visual encodings (position beats length beats angle beats area beats colour) — it answers most "which chart?" questions on its own
  • Never use a pie chart with more than three slices, and be ready to justify that rule in the exam
  • Collect bad charts from newspapers and rebuild them properly; critique-and-redesign is the fastest way to develop judgement
  • Every chart should have one message. If you cannot state it in a sentence, split the chart in two

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