For my data visualization project, I decided to try and chart the change in rankings for each baby name in the clearest possible way I could think of. I tried a lot of different approaches, but eventually I settled on making two graphs — one for male baby names and female baby names — that showed you just one name at a time. I wanted to make it so that there would be an option to see all the names next to each other, but unfortunately I couldn’t get Flourish (the program I decided to use) to make that happen. I had a fair amount of difficulty trying to manipulate the charts to get the data to show up exactly as I wanted it, but in the end, I was alright with the outcome.
I believe the line chart was a good choice for this data because it makes it incredibly easy to follow the ranking trends. I still included the other information in subtler ways, like how you can see the number of babies with a name in any given year by mousing over the data point. I intentionally made the data points larger than the default so that they would be easier to click on, given that I was going to make that an important part of the presentation. The charts are separated by gender so that information doesn’t get lost (I couldn’t figure out how to color-code the male and female names differently in the same chart!). I took some inspiration from the Data Feminism reading and decided to use non-standard colors for the different genders, although my goal wasn’t to make either one stand out more.
This visualization is explictly connected to DH because it tries to tell a story, which was an important theme in Lin Winton’s presentation. Although these graphs aren’t the only way to get the narrative across, the separated views are one way to clearly track the story of a name through time. Giving viewers access to as much data as possible allows them to critically examine the presentation, ask questions, and perhaps go find their own answers, which is what I tried to do here.
2 thoughts on “Lab 3 – Data Visualization”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I like your choice of graph for this assignment, and I think you did an effective job of making the information easily digestible as well as visually appealing. The interactive nature of the graph is a nice touch as well, and lets the user decide what specific information they want to focus on. I think your choice of prioritizing the name’s rank over count is interesting. Having the count appear when you hover over a data point is good information to have, but I think the rank is almost more important when looking at popularity over time when you don’t have the entire population to compare to. Great job!
I think your approach with the line charts is a great way to track the ranking changes of baby names. It’s clear and easy to follow the trends over time. I also appreciate your effort to make the data interactive; I tried to do that for mine, but it didn’t work. Separating the charts by gender and using non-standard colors is a smart choice, too.