Data Visualization & Mining

In Chapter 6 of The Digital Humanities Coursebook, the concept of information (data) visualization was introduced and subsequently expanded upon. In the most simple of terms, data visualization is the way that project creators are able to portray their findings in some form of visual form, such a chart, graph or image. Johanna Drucker describes data visualization as the following: "The visualizations are often more easily consumed than the complex research data on which they depend... Anything that can be quantified (given a numerical value) can be turned into a graph, chart, diagram, or other visualization" (Drucker 86). Graphs and the plotting of data has been engrained into educational systems for decades, and so the concept itself is not new. However, the usage of visualized data allows a larger group of people to view chunks of data, as many people may be unable to understand or see the meaning behind the data at its initial value. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow does a seamless job at utilizing data visualization in an interactive, easy-to-navigate format. By using an algorithm, the site is able to analyze the language in tweets in order to discuss how people are feeling that day; without data visualization, there would simply be large groups of tweets that fall under a certain emotion with nothing tying it together.

In Chapter 7, the concept of data mining was introduced. Data mining is essentially the way that a piece of work is analyzed for potential deeper information. Data mining was further defined and related back to what we may have experience with by Drucker, saying, "Data mining is an automated analysis that looks for patterns and extracts meaningful information in digital files (Underwood 2017). While it is not limited to analysis of so-called 'big' data, it is particularly useful at large scales. Data mining has long been incorporated into the natural and social sciences. It has become a part of research methods in text, music, sound recording, images, and multimodal communications studies with tools customized for these purposes" (Drucker 109). This definition not only made the concept easier to understand, but also made it applicable to examples that I've already seen. Six Degrees of Francis Bacon is an excellent example of data mining. The project of Six Degrees compares data from dozens of individuals between the years 1450 and 1750, and you're able to see the connections between many individuals across the "map".

Comments

  1. Zoe MichaelSeptember 26, 2022 at 10:20 PM

    I like the connection you used for data visualizing to yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It helped me get a clearer understanding of how it is being formatted and what it would look like if it weren't for data visualization

    ReplyDelete

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