spillthejava

[spillthejava]

Reflection Post 2: Course Goals

When I entered this course initially, one of my main goals was to gain a mastery (or at least a decent knowledge!) of web API’s and, personally, to gain some knowledge of web development along the way. In the end, I think I did this and more-- I was able to pick up new problem solving skills and apply old ones from CS 230, proving to myself that I am indeed building on a knowledge base and not just ‘scraping by’ without retaining information, I learned substantially more about web development and now feel comfortable with the idea of experimenting with web dev projects including API mashups, and I learned about something totally new (d3), which inspired me to pursue a summer project to revisit an AM I dropped. 

If I were to take the course again, I would try to leave my comfort zone more often and in greater extremes, and I would invest more time in help room. I think in the future if it is offered again, it may be a good idea to try and switch the group projects and AM’s up in a way that encourages students not to default on skills they’ve already developed and pushes them to engage with skills they have yet to master.

[spillthejava]

Reflection: Group presentation

After watching our group present our project, I have come out with a few observations. First, I personally think our group was very well paced. We spoke about everything we needed to. There were some issues of clarity (tone of voice, projection, volume), but the whole group was pretty well coordinated and did well in terms of eye contact and gesturing. If we were to do this over again, I think we would benefit from evening out the distribution of speaking parts a bit more, to have someone operate the mouse/computer while another spoke, and to smoothen out our transitions. Our greatest flaw seemed to be running into disjointed thoughts at certain points in transition and having the speaker be responsible for operating the computer as well, which made it difficult to maintain clear, confident presentation.

[spillthejava]

IP Review 2: Red State/Blue State

A very interesting concept with great application potential for the upcoming elections! One thing I am wondering-- first, will any information be provided to explain the two parties? Second, how will swing states be expressed? Third, will you add functionality to address counties that vote differently than their states? Finally, I’m not entirely sure as to what the game will be like or look like. Will it just be a point-and-click quiz game? A timed questionnaire? Overall this is an interesting project with a lot of relevance, but it just needs to be elaborated upon a little.

[spillthejava]

IP Review 1: Bus Tracker [Something Something]

This app idea has many strengths and a great potential for usefulness. An app of this sort could serve many real and tangible purposes to our community for both students and faculty. However, I do not feel as if the proposition is reaching the full potential of the application. For example, while the check-in system is very innovative and useful, a system of user accounts could be utilized for more than a tallying system if you can also use it to store information or generate a schedule-- something personalized. It may also be useful for app users to be able to record when they were prevented from/unable to proceed with boarding the bus. This way data could be collected to help administration better understand what needs students have regarding our transportation system. 

[spillthejava]

I did the same thing and essentially just explained that I had corrected the issue and produced the same example with different, corresponding explanations. If you don’t feel comfortable with this, maybe go back in the book to look at what it explains about the replacement error and reference or explain it using a snipped of that code.

#9 (and #10) on AM6

In #9, it asks for the code written to fix the issue of elements being replaced when incremented by 5 points, and #10, it asks for code to fix the broken list elements.

However, in my first implementation of the app (following the guide), I didn’t have any issues with broken elements, so I’m not sure what I’m suppose to write here…did anything else have everything working perfectly well? (It feels weird to be confused and complaining when everything is going right!)

[spillthejava]

AM5: Visualization Examples

My current (possibly soon to be ‘previous’) plan for visualization was to create a map of Wellesley college in which one might be able to actively view the flow of population from buildings, to other buildings via pathways and road systems in the form of small dots. I cannot find any D3 examples similar to this and may not have the time to create a custom layout for this project, so it is possible that I will have to default to other means of expressing population. Here are a few examples and ideas. 

http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2014/01/10/how-city-populations-change

In this blog, the two figures towards the bottom of the page are the ones that interest me. The bubble chart, which will appear again later in this post, is something I feel I could probably complete. The Garage Occupancy graph is another very interesting means of detailing population in Wellesley college if transcribed to fit my data, and I am also very interested in emulating it. 

http://bost.ocks.org/mike/bubble-map/

Once again the Bubble map appears. It is very well documented and, unlike topography, can work without needing to transcribe very specific geolocation information into my project. 

These are things I will consider, but I would love to go with my original plan if anyone has seen, or could suggest, a D3 example similar to what I’ve described. 

[spillthejava]

Urgent: Mongodb Failure

My server crashed while running mongodb, and now that I have restarted my computer, mongo is not working at all. When I type ‘mongo’ into command prompt, I get the following error: 

‘Mongo is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file’. Why is this happening? Please help!

[spillthejava]

Milestone 2: Data Visualization via Working With D3

After crunching through the tutorial, I have been successful in translating my data into a bar chart form (albeit clumsily, as you may have noticed given the position of the bar chart itself and the text accompanying it. This I intend to fix later on.) I am quite happy with having gotten my data to work with D3, as this bodes well for my ability to extrapolate it into more complex forms later on. 

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Milestone #1.

My data collection has been complete for some time. I am pulling course information from the json files provided at the start of AM5, cleaning them, and inputting them into a semesterData datastructure, which stores courses by semester, and a week array which allocates the correct courses to each day and hour. I have all the data I need so far, which I am happy about, and have also constructed functions to parse it in useful ways for D3 to work with.

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This is SUPER cool! I love how it looks, it’s very easy to read and understand and I’ve never seen something that looks like it before. I’m very excited to see how it turns out!

Waves of progress [AM5]

Excited about working on AM5 – here’s a glimpse of what mine looks like so far! My AM5 is mapping Peter Pan ridership on an average weekday/Saturday. After designing it, I’m going to create hover effects so the change in ridership between hours has a “wave effect” to it. The Saturday portion will mirror this weekday portion, so the contrast in ridership within the week for different times can be seen all at once!

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Reflection: Dear Data

What a truly wonderful project! It’s great seeing human connections used as such a foundation for art and the conveyance of data. My favorite was definitely the public transit vs straight lines (week 02) exchange, so it’s the one I’m going to critique.

1. The two have both strong and weak features, some of which overlap conversely. Stefanie’s ‘Straight Lines’ data is more readable in its set up, but less readable in its complexity. In some way adding such attributes as ‘walking with boyfriend’ and ‘under a hard rain with no umbrella’ are interesting to know, but they also make the diagram a bit harder to follow.

On the other hand, Giorgia presented a much more aesthetic diagram. At the same time, it was more legible because of how simple it was kept. This is one of the rare times when data omission may be a good thing, although I’m on the fence about it. Giorgia’s diagram is also, for its simplicity, much more easy to understand, especially in the context of transportation.

2. I would love to do this project with a friend, although I’d need a friend who was both willing to deal with the odd things I might choose to document AND could respond in code as well-- a tough overlap to identify.

[spillthejava]

I am in firm agreement with your for good practices. Legibility is key, but so is communication. When everyone is able to express their recommendations and desires in the best interest of the project, the project itself will generally end up much healthier and productive. It also can help discourage cherry picking and one-sided or biased data-sets and prevent the circulation of competing data visualizations. 

Design and Redesign - Thoughts

a) Which of the four presented redesigns resonates the most with you and for what reasons?

The visualization of the redesigned distribution of Republic vs. Democratic Votes of 2004 where the country’s size was augmented to reflect population distribution as well as how counties voted resonated the most with me. Although it is more difficult to understand because you are not used to seeing the USA in that way it makes more sense given the population distribution and counties. Otherwise, as was stated previously, it just looks like the entire country is basically voting Republican. It would be hard to believe that this type of visualization did not impact people’s opinions. I do wonder though if there is an even better way to represent this data that is more comprehensive….

b) If you were asked to critique a visualization, what criteria (or good practices) discussed in the article would you keep in mind to apply? 

Potential good practices:

1.) Express visually (and in words) the purpose of the visualization so as to be transparent about any types of pre-existing biases. This will also bring to light and simplifying assumptions the designers use to present the data.

2.) Establish a pre-existing dialogue with the designer and team to allow for critique and re-design without developing unproductive conversation and resentment between parties. This will help both parties (designer and critique) create the most useful result!

[spillthejava]

Reflections A & B For Design and Redesign

A. Of all redesigns, I am the fondest of the redesign of the Arab Spring infographic. While the original was very aesthetically pleasing, the second version is much more legible (which is VERY important considering how often Middle Eastern and North African politics is oversimplified, misunderstood and, in general, transformed into something performative for the West. I do think it may have been good to give the infographic some dynamic quality such that the audience could switch between the two views. 

B. My primary critique would center on legibility and integrity of the data. It is very important to me that the data can be read accurately, even if it means adding extra features to the infographic at large and making an aesthetic version secondary to a clear version. Even though a nice looking infographic is always good, it should not be marketed as an informative visualization if it is not accurately presenting the information, 

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Reflection: Visualizing Reformation [Additional]

Form fits function, but also expectation. The most poignant and perhaps important aspect of the discussion over visualizations and redesign-as-critique is the matter of integrity. Data certainly tells a story, and that is ultimately the point of data visualization as a technique. After all, the entire purpose of interpreting data into a physical form or info-graphic is to make it more accessible and legible to the audience. It is also true, however, that many times info-graphics are not made with the pure interest of telling the story as it is, but rather telling the story to meet a hypothesis or provoke the dominance of an already present inkling or thought. Is this a morally incorrect thing to do? There is certainly widespread debate over this already-- after all, opposing political strata have always used the same data, presented differently, as a means of arguing against one another’s platforms. The article brings up many good points about this as well-- for instance, with the example of Tufte and his redesign of data pertaining to the Challenger, one could foresee his choice to redesign or not redesign influence the success of not only the challenger, but the space program in general, as well as the parameters of space launch protocols. Moreover, the article goes on to address many ways in which both context and detail are lost in the process of designing and redesigning an info-graphic, often at the detriment of integrity and towards the facilitation of general aesthetic or persuasion. Like all forms of communication, it is clear that data visualization can hold great power over those it is geared towards, and while it is usually not so difficult to access the data itself in its raw form, most people will not do so and so are susceptible to the age old influences of false advertising, cherry picking, and misleading visualization. 

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Reflection: Browser Histories

It is the great fault of the modern human to, generally speaking, look casually at the internet and decide it is a thing too complex to investigate and, for us younger generations, too ingrained in daily life to imagine living without. As a result, the perspective we have on what the internet is, what the web is, and how the whole mash came to be, is somewhat limited. We view it as a tool for entertainment, a way of communicating casually, and, for some, a means of casually predating on an innocent’s mishandled data for personal gain. As revealed in Wednesday’s talk, these were not the priority of those who initially backed the creation of the web. Rather, the pure transmission of data and learning was.

This is an important detail and leads up to a concept mentioned within the talk with which I hold great personal fascination: those who created the web were so enamored with the idea of free information and scholarly resource that they did not consider security protocol until commercialization (specifically, net-shopping) and its need for privacy became an issue. There is something very charming with this, especially when one considers that nowadays, privacy and security seems to be at the forefront of even the most casual user’s mind. Everybody has a firewall, and MOST people (should) have an antivirus system installed to keep things safe on their end. Meanwhile, browsers themselves also do a lot of work to keep connections secure. All this against threats that were, at the start, never even considered. 

Finally, it is truly fascinating to see the push presented by Vanevar Bush’s memex, Berner-Lee’s web, and other important figures in the composite construction of the web as it confronted lack of interest at times, skepticism at others, and bankruptcy to finish any straggling pursuit off-- not for good, though. It is very heartening to learn how many great minds tried for years on end to be recognized only to have backs turned on them, whose ideas manifested now live on almost every office desk and nest in every coat pocket.

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Reflection: Security and Visibility

“Information wants to be free.” Such is the slogan of anti-data limiting activists, largely in response to the restriction of government data, particularly in the political intersection between national secrecy and the infringement of personal data for ‘security purposes’. While I have at times agreed with this, I cannot help being extremely off-put by the freeness of data as applies to personal privacy, especially when confronted with the various realities of potential infraction and invasion presented within today’s lecture. 

While it was a VERY interesting talk, very much solidifying my interest in cybersecurity as a field of work, it was also an offputting revelation as to the degree at which we exist unsafely. Most troubling in my opinion was the realization that Wellesley allows student information to be so insanely public, something which can put students at risk of stalking behavior and remove their agency of self-definition, as low standards of privacy are wont to do. This has, if nothing else, greatly impassioned me in the pursuit of safe technology, a net that permits individual freedom and security, and the development of laws geared towards the protection and fair use of data. 

[spillthejava]

Thanks, inlovewithjavascript! I actually figured it out a little bit before seeing your response and have managed to pull all of the data regardless of month in a somewhat meaningful and organized manner. Your advice is still very useful, and I’m going to tag this for others to find more easily. Again, thank you so much for your response!

Hey all. I’ve been working with D3 for the upcoming AM5. I’ve been able to to successfully import individual .Json files, but I would (obviously) like to import the entire dataset. I’m not entirely sure how to do this aside from actually transcribing the data addresses. Does...