In this assignment, we'll examine the logic of analysis and good visual communication. Respond to each question in a paragraph or two. Attach your dashboard to your answers (as an image file embedded in your text document or as a separate file) and email me your work by the start of class on Wednesday, February 26.

1. What is the American National Election Study? How are the data collected? What can you say about data quality with this data source?

2. Pose a question about voting. What is interesting and important about this question?

We'll be meeting in the sociology department computer lab, 3611 James, for the remainder of the semester. The lab has both Tableau desktop and Anaconda Python installed. If you don't want to install software on your own computer, you'll be able to do work for the course in the lab.

Open Tableau

On the Data Source tab, select connect to data. Select "Microsoft Excel" under To a File. Open CDWT_ch2_NYBoroughs.xlsx (see below). Repeat the process to open CDWT_ch3_DSNY.xlsx (see below).

Select the measure Population. Choose Create calculated field. Drag area into the computation box so that you are computing population / area. This is Population Density. Repeat this process to compute a calculated field that adds together paper and MGP recycling tons. This is Total Recycling. Repeat the process to compute Total Recycling per capita.

Data analytics: programming, statistics, machine learning, data cleaning, visualization

"Data gaze" -- knowledge/power, Foucault (Birth of the Clinic), "regard" or perception as a manifestation of knowledge creation practices in a particular domain

Post-industrial capitalism: knowledge economy, "platform capitalism"

If you come across material that you think is relevant to our work and might be useful to others in the course, post a comment to this page including the URL and a brief description of the resource.