Midterm

Date, Time & Location

Monday, October 23, 12:30-1:45pm, PM 103

Overview

The midterm will cover all material from the beginning of the semester through geospatial data. The material will cover Chapters 1,2,3,5,7,8.1-8.3, and 10. In addition, the exam will cover HTML, CSS, SVG, and D3 concepts, including the understanding of code. If you are required to write code, I will only require pseudocode—the exact syntax is not required. CS 627 students will have additional questions that will likely include the papers discussed in class.

Format

• Multiple Choice
• Free Response

Example Types of Free-Response Questions

• How would you encode a given dataset into a table visualization (idiom, marks, channels)?
• Identify the categorical, ordered, and quantitative attributes in a given table.
• What are the advantages of having a human involved in data analysis?
• What type of colormap would be appropriate for a given dataset? Which one of the following colormaps matches that type? Why would the other colormaps be suboptimal?
• What are problems with rainbow colormaps?
• Explain when you might use a tool like Tableau or Observable Plot instead of D3, and vice versa.
• What data items (numbers) are in newS at the end of this code? Remember how key functions work.

        var a = [1,4,7,3,2];
        d3.select("#myviz").append("svg");
        svg.selectAll("rect").data(a)
          .join("rect");
        
        var b = [4,7,3,2,5];
        var s = svg.selectAll("rect").data(b, function(d) { return d; });
        
        var newS = s.enter().append("rect").merge(s)

• What are the marks and channels in the following visualization? What is a problem with this visualization?