DA 6233: Data Analytics Visualization and

Communication

Ashwin Malshe

Fall 2021

Day Class Time Online Asynchronous

Day Office Hours By appointment
Evening Class Time Online Asynchronous
Evening Office Hours By appointment
Email ashwin.malshe@utsa.edu
Phone 530-762-1669
Office via Zoom
Website www.ashwinmalshe.com

This version of the syllabus is created on 2021-08-24. This will supersede any previous
versions of the syllabus.

Software

The following free software are required

• R 4.1.1 or later
• RStudio 1.4.1717 or later

Follow these instructions for installing and registering Tableau only after you have the li-
cense key.

1. Download Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep here

2. Select each product download link to get started. When prompted, enter your school
email address for Business E-mail and enter the name of your school for Organization.

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 3. Activate with your product key, which will be posted on Blackboard by 08/27.

This license is valid only for fall 2021 semester. You can continue using Tableau after the
class is over by individually requesting your own one-year license through the Tableau for
Students program.

Books (Not required by HIGHLY recommended)

All these books are freely available in the public domain. I strongly encourage buying them
for future use.

• R for Data Science (Free Online) and (Amazon)

• R Markdown: The Definitive Guide (Free Online) and (Amazon)

• ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (Free Online) and (Amazon)

Note: Also available in PDF format from UTSA libraries.

• Practical Tableau (Amazon)

Note: Also available in HTML format from UTSA libraries.

Additional Reading:

• How Charts Lie by Alberto Cairo: http://albertocairo.com

• ggplot2 book website: http://ggplot2.org/book/
• Htmlwidgets for R: http://www.htmlwidgets.org/
• Flowing Data: https://flowingdata.com/

Online Tutoring

UTSA has partnered with TutorMe to provide online tutoring up to four hours a week per
student. You can access this service from Blackboard by clicking on “TutorMe” link in the left
menu bar.
To use TutorMe effectively, I strongly recommend watching this video and reading this doc-
ument.

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Learning Objectives

1. R coding
2. Fundamentals of data visualization
3. Visualization for cross-sectional, time-series, and spatial data
• Using R packages such as ggplot2 for static visualizations
• Using JavaScript libraries in R for interactive visualizations
• Using Tableau for creating dashboards

Course Description

This course aims to teach students the principles of data visualization and introduce them to
tools for more effective visualization and communication. Whereas data analytics methods
are gaining prominence, communicating that analysis to decision-makers remains a signif-
icant challenge. Visualization tools such as graphs, dashboards, and websites are helpful in
such communication. However, without systematic knowledge of the best practices in visu-
alization, it’s easy to mislead the audience with incorrect object sizes, color shading, exces-
sive cluttering, or arbitrarily truncated scales. At the end of the syllabus, I reproduce three
images downloaded from the subreddit r/dataisugly, making this point amply clear.
The course will use R and Tableau to create visualizations. R has several libraries, which spe-
cialize in plotting. We will, in particular, use ggplot2 and many other libraries that depend
on ggplot2. These libraries are related to each other and have similar syntax for the func-
tions, which will make things easier. Tableau is arguably one of the most popular visualiza-
tion software among practitioners. Salesforce recently purchased it.

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Schedule

Week 01, 08/24: Introduction and Basics of R, RStudio, and Github

Week 02, 08/31: Data wrangling with R
Week 03, 09/07: Data wrangling with R
Week 04, 09/14: What we can easily see
Week 05, 09/21: The grammar of graphics with ggplot2
Week 06, 09/28: The grammar of graphics with ggplot2
Week 07, 10/05: The grammar of graphics with ggplot2
Week 08, 10/12: Final project topics discussion
Week 09, 10/19: Introduction to interactive visualizations
Week 10, 10/26: Introduction to interactive visualizations
Week 11, 11/02: Tableau
Week 12, 11/09: Tableau
Week 13, 11/16: Tableau
Week 14, 11/23: Tableau
Week 15, 11/30: Final presentations

Grading

Grading is based on a group project and four individual assignments.

Homework assignments – 60%
Final project presentation – 40%

Score Grade
97.5-100 A+
95-97.5 A
90-95 A-
87.5-90 B+
85-87.5 B
80-85 B-
77.5-80 C+
75-77.5 C+
< 75 F

Homework Assignments (Individual)

There will be four individual homework assignments, each with a one week deadline. The
homework will involve creating visualizations. You will submit your code and output com-
bined as an Rmarkdown file along with the output html file. There will be a homework on

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Tableau as well. In that case you will submit your Tableau Workbook. Each homework as-
signment is worth 15 points.

Homework Deadlines

Table 1: Homework Submission

Homework Maximum Points Topic Made Available On Due Date

1 15% R Coding 09/07 09/14
2 15% ggplot2 09/28 10/05
3 15% Interactive Viz 10/26 11/02
4 15% Tableau 11/09 11/16
Note:
The hard deadline is 18:00 CST on the submission date

Final Project (Group work)

The final project will require you to create a static or interactive visualization that helps edu-
cate organizations (profit or non-profit), policymakers, consumers, etc., using publicly avail-
able data sets. The final project will be entirely graded on the dashboard. I will grade the
content of the presentation according to the relevance of the topic to practitioners (purely
academic visualizations for the sake of it will get low grades), attention to details, and insight
discovery. Pretty visualizations that do not tell us about anything interesting are meaning-
less.
I will post a list of project topics and related datasets on Github and make them available to
you in the first week of classes. Some of the examples are the Covid-19 dashboard, 2020 US
Presidential Elections dashboard, etc.

I will make groups of four students each based on the UTSA IDs. The groups will be
finalized by the end of the first week because we may have late admissions.

Late Submissions

No late submissions are allowed. The submission links on Blackboard disappear past dead-
line. If you anticipate late submission, email me in advance so that I can give you extra time
if needed.

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Policy on Cheating

Students are expected to be above reproach in academic activities. Students who violate
University rules on academic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary penalties, including the
possibility of failure in the course and dismissal from the University. “Scholastic dishonesty
includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, collusion, the submission for credit of any
work or materials that are attributable in whole or in part to another person, taking an exam
for another person, any act designed to give an unfair advantage to a student or the attempt
to commit such acts.” From The University of Texas System Rules and Regulations of the
Board of Regents, Rule: 50101. (www.utsystem.edu/BOR/rules.htm).

Right to Privacy

Except under specific exceptions provided in the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
of 1974, I will not give information concerning your grades, academic progress, attendance,
address, phone, or e-mail to anyone outside the UTSA system unless you give your prior writ-
ten permission. In addition, I will not provide or discuss grade information over the phone or
by e-mail.

Special Needs

If you feel that you are eligible for or maybe helped by accommodations in the class due to
a disability or special need, contact the Office of Disability Services (ODS). Students with
disabilities must be registered with the ODS located in MS 2.03.18 (458 4157 – voice; 458
4981 – TRY) or UTSA Downtown in FS 1.526 (458-2816) in order to receive support services.
To see if you are eligible for these services and privileges, visit the website below: http://
www.utsa.edu/disability/studeligibility.htm

Three Examples of Bad Visualizations

Here I show 3 examples of bad visualizations. I will discuss these briefly in the class.

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The fast browser that broke the scale (Source)

Figure 1: Microsoft Edge

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The pie chart (pizza chart?) that doesn’t add up to 100%(Source)

Figure 2: Pizza Chart

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Stand your ground flips the image (Source)

Figure 3: Gun Deaths