C35/C85 Interactive Data Visualization and Society

Offered under: 6.C35, 6.C85, 11.C35, 11.C85
Term(s): Spring only
Level: Undergraduate and Graduate
Units: 12
Prerequisite: None
Instructors: Catherine D’Ignazio (DUSP), Arvind Satyanarayan (EECS), Sarah Williams (DUSP)

Focuses on developing technical skills to work with big data to expose societal issues and communicate the insights. Working with an external partner (e.g., city government, NGO, academic researcher, media outlet, community organization), students frame important issues that can be mediated or communicated by interactive visualizations. Students then work with real-world datasets, provided by the partner, to implement their own interactive web-based data visualizations (using Vega-Lite, JavaScript, CSS and D3) designed to have a positive civic impact in that domain. Provides exposure to both the messiness and imperfection of real-world data as well as key issues of ethics and inequality that may arise in working with it.
Go to catalog listing