Summary and Schedule

This is a lesson introducing the basics of data visualization in the form of charts and graphs.

The lesson materials are geared toward an undergraduate audience.

Learners need the following prerequisite skills and knowledge:

• Understand the definition of “data”
• Have previously seen a chart or graph
• Have some exposure to tabular data
• Have attempted to create a chart or graph using a spreadsheet application
• Download and save data and images to a local computer or personal account

	Setup Instructions	Download files required for the lesson
Duration: 00h 00m	1. The Importance of Message	What is a chart? What is the purpose of a chart? What do we need to make a chart? Why is chart message so important?
Duration: 00h 20m	2. Graphical Elements of a Chart	When creating a chart, what components do I have to work with? Which chart components are easier for people to perceive accurately? How can chart components support a chart’s message?
Duration: 00h 50m	3. Identify and Interpret the Message	What are four common messages usually communicated in a chart? 2. What are useful charts to communicate these messages? 3. How do we construct text to describe these messages? 4. How does the type of data help determine the message?
Duration: 00h 50m	4. Communicating the Message	What are the important aspects of a dataset you want to communicate? 2. What is the best visualization type for a particular dataset?
Duration: 00h 50m	Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.

Introduction

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This lesson introduces data visualization by focusing on the basic components of a chart and on the decisions you need to make in order to create and refine a chart. You will learn to craft messages about data and communicate those messages in charts. The principles applied to charts in this lesson can be applied to more complex data visualizations, but these are beyond the scope of this lesson.

Data Set

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In this lesson we will use a dataset about large North American canids: wolves, coyotes, and foxes¹. Public policy and scientific decisions have drastically changed these populations over the past century. The presence or absence of these animals near population centers, livestock, and nature preserves stirs public debate in the present day. You will practice communicating scientific information about large North American canids in messages and charts that the public can understand.

Download the data and unzip it to your Desktop.

Instructor Note

The data download link pulls the file canids.tsv from this lesson’s GitHub repository. This file is a tab-separated values format of the original data set deposited at Dryad and is the format used in this lesson. An Excel-formatted version of the data is also available in the Dryad record.

Software Setup

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This lesson uses Google Sheets as the software tool for generating charts from tabular data. This tool has some important advantages:

• The software is freely available online.
• The software works similarly regardless of operating system.
• The software uses a graphical interface, which can be more approachable for new users.

For this lesson, you will need a free Google account to use Google Sheets and save your work. You will also need an up-to-date web browser.

Instructor Note

Episode 4: Communicating the Message contains all of the Google Sheets content in this lesson. The charts functions in Google Sheets are similar to those in other spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc. You are free to adapt Episode 4 if you wish to use a different spreadsheet program.

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1. Newsome, Thomas M.; Ripple, William J. (2015). Data from: A continental scale trophic cascade from wolves through coyotes to foxes [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.s0d20.↩︎