March 8, 2021聽鈥斅燚on鈥檛聽just聽show numbers鈥攖ell a story.聽That was the idea behind聽聽(华体会)鈥檚聽2021 Plot-a-thon Data Visualization Festival, which was held last Friday.聽
The virtual day-long event immersed students in the world of聽data visualization鈥攖he process of taking a聽mountain聽of raw data and compressing聽it into聽a colorful聽pie chart, bar chart,聽a word cloud,聽cartoons聽or an interactive map that appears to move and breathe as the data rolls in.
More than 31 students participated in the Plot-A-Thon along with Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Writing Multiliteracy Center Sohui Lee Ph.D; Digital Archivist Elizabeth Blackwood; Assistant Professor of Computer Science Scott Feister, Ph.D. and Associate Professor of Marketing Ekin Pehlivan. Ph.D., who together organized the event.聽
鈥淭he 21st聽Century is the century of data,鈥� Lee聽said. 鈥淚f our students are to be successful in the new digital future, they need to know how to read it and they need to know how to create it.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e basically in a data gold rush right now,鈥� Feister said.
After an introduction, the students broke into subgroups to learn about the data visualization programs聽Excel, Python, R program, and Tableau. Faculty from Computer Science, Environmental Science & Resource Management (ESRM), the John Spoor Broome Library,聽and the Writing & Multi-literacy Center ran the different workshops.
After a morning of workshops, the competing teams came together for the lunchtime keynote speeches, given by聽Senior Director of Business and Development for The Trade Desk and 聽Founder and CEO of Wet Cement, Jennifer聽Willey,聽and Axios Data Visualization Journalist Michelle McGhee. McGhee聽explained how she creates understandable charts and data visualization graphics for reporters to help better explain their story.聽
鈥淚 do a mini-plot-a-thon every day,鈥� McGhee said. 鈥淚 think about the story and how to guide someone through the story with data.鈥�
聽鈥淰isualizing data is absolutely critical,鈥� Willey said. 鈥淚鈥檝e seen too many people make the mistake of just putting up numbers and thinking that will break through and help people care.鈥�
Pehlivan聽believes understanding and working with data is a big advantage for first-time聽job-seekers.
鈥淚n the business world, companies are asking if our students are data literate,鈥� Pehlivan said. 鈥淯nderstanding marketing data is becoming a must for potential employees.鈥�
Plot-A-Thon competitor and Mechatronics major Emiko Ito and her team created a data visual from a massive list of reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.
鈥淢y group and I used the data to plot the worst movies rated by the聽Tomatometer聽from 1990 to 2020 using the average rating of those movies with a 49% or less,鈥� Ito said. 鈥淲e used Python to graph our points and made a 3-D graph to accurately represent it.鈥�
Business major Jacqueline Cortes and her team used Excel to create their data visual.聽
鈥淚t was fun to see how we replaced a lot of data with an infographic that my team and I created,鈥� Cortes said. 鈥淲hat I found to be the most challenging was I had no prior knowledge about any of this before Plot-A-Thon. I聽knew how to use Excel, but just the basics, but we received some help and then we realized it was easier than what we thought.鈥�
At the end of a day, a team of three judges鈥攖wo from 华体会 and one from The Trade Desk鈥攄eclared that the overall winners, who each received $250, were: Kylie Godinez and Anabel Grimaldo for 鈥淎 Decade In Movies.鈥澛�
Winners in the other three categories received $100聽a piece: They were:
Best in Excel: Britnay Haddox and Angelina Artero for 鈥淢ovies over the Decades.鈥�
Best in Python: Travis Chamness, Robert Casas and Madalyn Henderson for 鈥淕enerational Genre Trends鈥�
Best in R: Luis Salgado, Eduardo Saucedo and Joseph Miller for 鈥淒o Rotten Tomatoes Have Scoring Bias Based on Horror Film Ratings?鈥�