Week5-karoad-Kenny-Rhodes

week1.md

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+<h1>Week 1 Reflection</h1>
+<h3>Reflection type: Viz Review</h3>
+<h2>VizSrc: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ldu42x/oc_comparative_2020_gdp_usa_eu_prc/</h2>
+
+![Viz Display from link](images/week1Viz.PNG)
+
+<h2>Review:</h2>
+<h3>I thought that this viz was interesting to me, mostly because of the crazy range of its scale. I thought it was interesting because while I was scrolling through /r/dataisbeautiful for this assignment I noticed this and thought it was a cool idea for a viz. I had heard about state income discrepencies before but I found this viz hard to use. I blame this on the fact that the scale spans 6 orders of magnitude and doesn't really have a large amount range. This is then made worse as the middle value of the scale is completely unknown to me, and I can only guess it is logarithmic. I learned a few things about the use of color and scale from this viz. I think that the simplist change would be to add more color brackets in the scale, shift how the color fades to change more in the lower end, and to potentially label the color sections more. I think that another modification could be to be adding animations. This could either display the GDP of a region that is being hovered over or some sort of probing tool for the viz. As a note I would also guess that the viz designer is from europe because the Europe section of the graph is much more legible, but that could also just be the data.</h3>
+

week2.md

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+<h1>Week 2 Reflection</h1>
+<h3>Reflection type: Viz Review</h3>
+<h2>VizSrc: https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/</h2>
+
+![Viz Display from link](images/week2Viz.PNG)
+
+<h2>Review:</h2>
+<h3>I chose this pack of covid data because I had never seen such a consolidated piece of visualization work with so many different options for exploring data in many ways. Among my favorit two graphs on this page are the "How Contagious & Deadly is It?" viz and the "Country comparison" tool. The comparison tool is super interesting to work with because it allows for 4 countries to be compared along a few different data sets. I also thought that the fatality range was super interesting to see because I know it is a question I had about the virus and it is somewhat enlightening. I did have two problems with the graph, first being that CFR being unreliable during a pandemic makes the conclusions from the graph also unreliable but the fact they gave a range box and noted that on the viz is super good. My bigger concern with it was the change in y axis scale from logarithmic at the bottom to linear after 10%. I think that is is a good way to fit all the data but some alert to make sure viewers notice the change is important. The compilation of all these graphs in one place is extremely impressive given their quality and responsivenes. They all have very helpful notes included with the data and all have recency tags so that viewers know they are getting updated info. Clearly the visualizers of these graphs know their visual channels because all of the data pops out with a reliable color scheme used throughout the page which made it easy to read and clear.</h3>

week3.md

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+<h1>Week 3 Reflection</h1>
+<h3>Reflection type: Viz Source and </h3>
+<h2>First Map of Mars Electric Currents: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13625, Source: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/search/?keyword=432</h2>
+
+![Viz Display from link](images/week3Viz.PNG)
+
+<h2>Space Data Viz:</h2>
+<h3>I chose this source of space visuals because I was inspired by the landing of Perserverance this past week! As a kid the visualizations of
+space weather, missions, and other phenomena was what got me interested in STEM in the first place. In particular it was a video at a mueseum of the Mars rovers Spirit and Oppertunity. I think that space visualizations, while they may not necessarily be data driven like the animations I saw, are hugely important because of their ability to inspire. To find some more data driven viz's I searched NASA's Goddard Media Studios and found this viz on Martian atmospheric interactions with solar wind. I thought it was really interesting because the visuals come from a very complicated dataset collected by a orbiter measuring magnetic data. They had to plot this data by mapping it to its location relative to the planet, and Im not entirely sure what the magnitude and hue of the vectors represent about atmospheric electric currents but thats more due to me not being an expert in the field than the viz. They are using this data to analyze how Mars loses atmosphere to the solar wind's ionizing radiation. I think that it would be really cool to create some visualizations to have a daily space weather report. This could teach the public more about the danger of solar flares and potentially calm some people down about magnetic field reversals. </h3>

week4.md

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+<h1>Week 4 Reflection</h1>
+<h3>Reflection type: Viz Review</h3>
+<h2>https://historicborders.app/?view=globe%20[OC]</h2>
+
+![Viz Display from link](images/week4Viz.PNG)
+
+<h2>Civilizations Over time</h2>
+<h3>I chose this visual because I thought it was a really incredible viz that held my attention for far longer than originally intended. I found this viz on r/dataisbeautiful and I spent about an hour going through the 10+ years provided and got to see what civilizations existed at the same time. This was super interesting because of the new things I learned, the context the visual provided, and a sense of scale that I hadnt appreciated. The new things I learned included the existance of entire civilizations I had never heard of which is mind blowing to me. The context provided was incredible in a spatial and temporal sense. I had no idea that the massachusetts bay colony and the holy roman empire existed at the same time, this visual really helped me break down preconcieved notions about history. The sense of scale provided by being able to one compare the size of civilizations next to each other is helpful but also seeing the worlds land become more separated and claimed over time was also interesting. The interactivity of this map is also key to its use. By being able to scroll and zoom around the map you can change the scope of how you view how the civilizations may have interacted. I thought looking at the globe and seeing asian civiliations and native american civilizations across the pacific and thought it was really interesting.</h3>

week5.md

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+<h1>Week 5 Reflection</h1>
+<h3>Reflection type: Viz Review</h3>
+<h2>https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/lvagbz/i_tracked_all_of_my_gaming_time_between_december/</h2>
+
+![Viz Display from link](images/week5Viz.png)
+
+<h2>2020 Video Games</h2>
+<h3>I chose this visual because I thought it was a very interesting study to do and I thought it was something that could be a really interesting social experiement. If one created an app that functioned almost like a diary but it just logged daily activity you could create a daily generated  graph like this of daily activity. I think that visualization would be a really powerful reflective tool, but honestly kind of scary. This would best be done though as a part of a number of visualizations. I thought this one in particular was very relatable to my time in the pandemic, Im jealous of his colletion! I think this visual really would be best alongside other visuals that are more focused on data delivery, like stacked bar charts of data or graphs of change in hours played over time. This would provide an interesting tool as well as an interesting infographic to share how you spend your time! Making this visual seems rather difficult to do algorithmically though, given the mix of colors and oddly shaped area. In terms of improving this visual specifically, I think the use of labeling large areas but small ones could use some other kinda of identification method as Aviary Attorney was very hard to read. Also, the Y axis also confused me as it has no sign change past zero but it isnt symetrical which is hard for me to rationalize. This visual might have inspired a future viz project!</h3>

week6.md

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+Here's how it works:
+
+Every week, make an effort to explore the data visualization community
+Everyone has their preferred way of finding out more about a topic. You probably already come across visualizations in your daily life, either through news or social media. If you already feel "plugged in" to the data-driven world, by all means use those as reflection material.
+
+Sources
+Following folks on Twitter (for some reason there are tons of datavis folks on Twitter)
+Reading visualization news blogs like FiveThirtyEight and The Upshot
+Diving into a domain of interest (biology, security, etc) and it's relation to visualization (see BioVis, VizSec for example)
+Wikipedia
+Reddit (/r/dataisbeautiful)
+Stack Overflow (check the d3 and ggplot2 tags)
+Academic / practitioner visualization blogs: eagereyes.org (he links to many others)
+...and hundreds of other ways.
+
+
+Before class, add a reflection on a writing of your choosing to the appropriate week in your fork of the repo
+There are few requirements for the reflection. I ask that you aim for 10 sentences at minimum.
+
+The form and overall length of the writing is up to you. This task is meant to give you the creative space for exploration in the the data viz world. Some suggestions about the kinds of refelctions we expect are agreements or disagreements with a paper or talk you find, a small introduction to a new visualization technique/technology that came out, improvements or future work for a visualization you find on a news website etc. I recommend including links so you can find the resources later on. You can make multiple entries if it suites you-- I could imagine calling on reflections as you generate ideas for your final project.
+
+To submit, make a pull request.
+
+

week7.md

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+Here's how it works:
+
+Every week, make an effort to explore the data visualization community
+Everyone has their preferred way of finding out more about a topic. You probably already come across visualizations in your daily life, either through news or social media. If you already feel "plugged in" to the data-driven world, by all means use those as reflection material.
+
+Sources
+Following folks on Twitter (for some reason there are tons of datavis folks on Twitter)
+Reading visualization news blogs like FiveThirtyEight and The Upshot
+Diving into a domain of interest (biology, security, etc) and it's relation to visualization (see BioVis, VizSec for example)
+Wikipedia
+Reddit (/r/dataisbeautiful)
+Stack Overflow (check the d3 and ggplot2 tags)
+Academic / practitioner visualization blogs: eagereyes.org (he links to many others)
+...and hundreds of other ways.
+
+
+Before class, add a reflection on a writing of your choosing to the appropriate week in your fork of the repo
+There are few requirements for the reflection. I ask that you aim for 10 sentences at minimum.
+
+The form and overall length of the writing is up to you. This task is meant to give you the creative space for exploration in the the data viz world. Some suggestions about the kinds of refelctions we expect are agreements or disagreements with a paper or talk you find, a small introduction to a new visualization technique/technology that came out, improvements or future work for a visualization you find on a news website etc. I recommend including links so you can find the resources later on. You can make multiple entries if it suites you-- I could imagine calling on reflections as you generate ideas for your final project.
+
+To submit, make a pull request.
+
+