The Landscape of College-level Data Visualization Courses, and the Benefits of Incorporating Statistical Thinking

Data visualization is a core part of statistical practice and is ubiquitous in many fields. Although there are numerous books on data visualization, instructors in statistics and data science may be unsure how to teach data visualization, because it is such a broad discipline. To give guidance on te...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2024-12
Main Authors: Branson, Zach, Monica Paz Parra, Yurko, Ronald
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetic design
Data science
Scientific visualization
Statistical inference
Teachers
Teaching
Visualization
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Data visualization is a core part of statistical practice and is ubiquitous in many fields. Although there are numerous books on data visualization, instructors in statistics and data science may be unsure how to teach data visualization, because it is such a broad discipline. To give guidance on teaching data visualization from a statistical perspective, we make two contributions. First, we conduct a survey of data visualization courses at top colleges and universities in the United States, in order to understand the landscape of data visualization courses. We find that most courses are not taught by statistics and data science departments and do not focus on statistical topics, especially those related to inference. Instead, most courses focus on visual storytelling, aesthetic design, dashboard design, and other topics specialized for other disciplines. Second, we outline three teaching principles for incorporating statistical inference in data visualization courses, and provide several examples that demonstrate how instructors can follow these principles. The dataset from our survey allows others to explore the diversity of data visualization courses, and our teaching principles give guidance to instructors and departments who want to encourage statistical thinking via data visualization. In this way, statistics-related departments can provide a valuable perspective on data visualization that is unique to current course offerings.
ISSN:2331-8422