Informatics 143 – Exploring Many Eyes

This assignment is due on Tuesday, May 12 (before the start of class at 3:30 as usual).

The first step is to create an account on Many Eyes.

1. Go to http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home
2. Create an account.

The second step is to find a data set, edit it / clean it up, upload it, and visualize it.

1. To find a dataset, go to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract web page, at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
2. Find an Excel file that interests you, and download it.
3. Add a new sheet to the downloaded Excel file for your edited / cleaned up data, and copy the main data onto that sheet.
4. Edit the copy on the new sheet, so that extraneous rows are gone and all column headings are meaningful.
5. Upload your data into Many Eyes, and give it meaningful meta data.
6. Explore several visualizations of your data.
7. Select a visualization that is particularly meaningful and interesting, and another that may look good but doesn’t convey any interesting relationships in the data. Publish each of those, with helpful names.

The third step is to upload a short report to Checkmate. The report can be in Word (not .docx), text, or PDF format. Briefly describe the data and how you manipulated the data. Did you remove columns or rows? Give the Many Eyes names of your two visualizations, and explain in short paragraphs why the good one is good and the bad one is bad.