CMSC 434            Homework #5            Spring 2017


This is the "extra credit" homework assignment. If you plan to do it, it is due on ELMS by 11:59pm on Wednesday, May 10th.

The idea of this (optional) "extra credit" homework assignment is to provide a way to make up for an earlier homework issue without creating an implied requirement of doing the assignment. Doing all 5 posted homework assignments will not allow you to exceed 100/100 on the homework points available.

In this assignment, you will explore information representation and visualization. There are many tools available across the spectrum, including Excel, PowerBI, and Tableau to name but a few.

The content and context for this assignment is "Generation Mobile" with historic summary data from 2011 and class-generated data from last week! The posted Excel file also has the summary data from the 2011 exploration. Both data-collection samples have a bias. The 2011 sample comes from an unspecified collection of college students, obtained over Facebook. Our same comes from a room of CS majors taking an HCI class.

The overarching goals of this assignment are:
  • explore storytelling based on data
  • explore how to make visualizations or infographics to help tell that story


    • Your submission should aim to make use of interesting and appropriate data representation and visualization to provide easy access to the conclusions you've drawn about the 2011 and 2017 data.

    Your specific tasks are:
  • Find 3 to 5 of the "most important" stories that you feel emerge from, or can be demonstrated by, this data.
  • For each of those stories, describe how you explored or represented the data to come up with or support that story/insight.
  • Provide a meaningful/interesting data representation/visualization image/screenshot for each story.


    • This (optional) assignment is due by Wednesday, May 10th at the latest. An entry will be added to ELMS to allow you to upload a a PDF file with your visualizations with captions and your discussions.


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