CSE512: Data Visualization

Useful Resources

Tools

Visualization Toolkits

A variety of useful toolkits have been designed to help support information visualization applications. Some include support for the full visualization pipeline from data to interactive graphics, while others focus only on a subset, typically graphics and interaction.

D3 - A JavaScript library for data-driven DOM manipulation, interaction and animation. Includes utilities for visualization techniques and SVG generation.
Vega - A declarative language for representing visualizations. Vega will parse a visualization specification to produce a JavaScript-based visualization, using either HTML Canvas or SVG rendering. Vega is particularly useful for creating programs that produce visualizations as output.
Processing or p5.js - A popular Java-like graphics and interaction language and IDE. Processing has a strong user community with many examples. p5.js is a sister project for JavaScript.
Protovis - JavaScript visualization language, predecessor of d3.
HTML/JavaScript/XML - use standard web technologies to build the visualization. You may use libraries such as jQuery and the Google Maps API to help build your visualization.
Leaflet – a popular open-source mapping library
Flare - Visualization toolkit for Adobe Flash
Prefuse - Visualization toolkit for Java
Improvise - Java system supporting coordinated views
InfoVis Toolkit - A Java visualization library, from INRIA France
Piccolo - A Java library for zoomable UIs, from U. Maryland (Java and .NET)
VTK - A scientific visualization library (C++ with wrappers for other languages)

Visualization Tools

Tableau for Students - get a free Tableau license as a student
Tableau Public - a free version of Tableau which publishes to the web
Voyager - a web-based data exploration tool from IDL.
GGplot2 - a graphics language for R
Lyra - an interactive visualization design environment
GGobi - visualizations for multivariate data
Improvise - a visualization tool supporting a variety of visualization types
ParVis - software for parallel coordinates
TimeSearcher - interface for time-series data from U Maryland
TreeMap - tree-mapping software from U Maryland

Network Analysis Tools

Gephi - an interactive graph analysis application
NodeXL - a graph analysis plug-in for Excel
GUESS - a combined visual/scripting interface for graph analysis
Pajek - another popular network analysis tool
NetworkX - graph analysis library for Python
SNAP - graph analysis library for C++

Color Tools

kuler - Color Palette Generator
Color Brewer

Web Development Tools

Beginner? Start with Sublime Text with Emmet and SublimeLinter/JSHint
Like IDE and willing to pay? Webstorm is a good option.
Dash is great for quick documentation look up in Mac.

Tutorials & Tips

In addition to our workshops, these tutorials could be useful for Assignment 3, final project, and your future visualization work.

HTML, CSS

Basics:
- Mozilla Develop Network (HTML, CSS).
- CSS Zen Garden
Extras
- Sass is easy to learn and a powerful way to write CSS.
- Compass contains a lot of reusable patterns.
- Twitter Bootstrap is a popular template.

Javascript

Fundamental JavaScript Concepts
- Mozilla Developer Network
- JavaScript Garden is a good reference to language quirks and gotchas.
- Eloquent Javascript – free online book by Marijn Haverbeke
- A re-introduction to JavaScript (JS Tutorial) on Mozilla Developer Network
- JavaScript: The Good Parts – Douglas Crockford (See also his YUI videos)
- Learning JavaScript Design Patterns by Addy Osmani
Debugging:
- Learn to use the Webkit Inspector (or Firebug if you’re a firefox fan.)
  - Learn useful short keys– the basic one is cmd+shift+Ifor opening inspector. Then you can learn more by clicking the gear button on the bottom right and see the shortcuts tab
- use JSHint to avoid syntactic bugs
Addy Osmani's list of good JavaScript style guide
Javascript MVC
- Backbone.js - Simple MVC Backbone
  - Backbone Fundamentals
- Angular.js - better but takes more time to learn (say 1-2 weeks to really understand concepts)
  - Start with egghead.io and thinkster.io.
  - Angular's official documentation is a pain. When you look at it, make sure to look at comments so you learn from others' confusion. The community is big, so it should get better over time.
  - Use yeoman
  - Useful stuff from ng-newsletter
    - Angular for jQuery developer
  - Make sure to have AngularJS Batarang in Chrome so you can debug scope.
Javascript utility libraries like Lodash (An arguably better fork of underscore) – make sure to use them only if needed. Sometimes d3 helpers are enough.
- a lodash tutorial
Need an in-memory database for your vis prototype? - try datavore or crossfilter
Syntax alternatives: Coffeescript, MS TypeScript

d3.js

Interactive Data Visualization for the Web Scott Murray (free online version)
- Scott Murray’s Original tutorial (shorter)
Vadim Ogievetsky's Intro Slides
Jérôme Cukier & Scott Murray’s d3 tutorial at Strata 2013 (slides)
- (older) d3 tutorial at Visweek 2012 by Jérôme Cukier, Jeff Heer, and Scott Murray. (source, demo, cheatsheet)
More extensive list of examples can be found in d3's tutorial page and gallery and Christophe Viau's gallery.

Git & Github

Git Tutorials
Github
- Use Github's issue tracker, so you can refer to issues in your commit messages using # followed by issue no.
- Working in a team? Use Github's Pull Request so you can do code review.
  - Pull Request Workflows by Patrick Cozzi
- Extras
  - Interactive Rebase
  - Need to merge multiple repos (e.g. using datavore in another project)? Use git subtree and DO NOT use git submodule.
GUI
- Using git with command line is generally fast but using SourceTree is easier for reviewing your code before committing or committing a part of your changes and reduce chances that you will run a wrong command (such as push wrong branch to master).
More Tips
- Atomic Commit is a good practice.
- Stash is useful when you have unfinished messy things and need to switch branches to work on something else.

Data Sets