Training 4: Dataviz in practice - introduction

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Welcome to the “Dataviz in practice” training!

In this introduction, I will walk you through the topics that will be covered in the training, so you will have a good idea what to expect. I will also explain the educational approach of the training and will give you all the practical information you need to follow and complete the training.

Educational approach

This training is set up to be a fully remote and asynchronous training.

A fully remote training means that the trainer and the participants do not meet physically during the training. Participants can follow the training from anywhere, as long as they have access to a computer and an internet connection.

An asynchronous training means that the trainer and the participants, apart from not sharing the same geographical space, are also separated in time. The training is set up in a way so that participants can follow the training at their own pace, and during the time that suits them best.

The training is not fully asynchronous, as you can tell from this live session: currently, we are in one of the few synchronous parts of the training. We will have a few more of these at the end of the training on Friday.

But most of the training will be asynchronous. The training is split up into modules, that you can follow in your own time and at your own pace. The training contains the following types of modules:

We will discuss the training schedule and the modules of this training later in this session. But each module has an estimate of the duration to complete the module. All together, the duration of all modules in the training amounts to 16 hours. The training runs from the start of this live session to the end of the closing session on Friday afternoon next week.

This means that participants have 10 working days to complete the modules of the training. They can schedule the modules at their own likings, but apart from the schedule of the live sessions, there are some deadlines to be met during the training (see further).

Dataviz in practice?

This training is focussed on the practicalities of making visualisations. The goal is to make your data visualisation workflow more efficient by having a better understanding of some technical concepts and by using new techniques and tools.

The starting point for any data visualisation is the data. But data can come in many different formats and structures. And data can be clean, but usually the data is messy in some way, and you have to do some cleaning up and data reshaping before the data is ready to be visualised. So the first modules in this training are dedicated to data file formats, data cleaning and tools to work with data.

Graphics and visualisations themselves are also stored as files. These files fall into two categories: bitmap files and vector files. Both have their strengths and weaknesses for editing and publishing visualisations, and within each category many different file formats exist. These file formats and their characteristics are the topic of the next modules.