Leanna House (Virginia Tech)
Abstract
Big Data are thrilling when we think about how information gained from the data may result in positive changes in industry, government, education, etc. However, raw data alone, do noth- ing for society. Datasets are just tables of numbers without humans to assess, process, discover, and communicate information in the data [Thomas and Cook, 2005]. That is, only when humans think critically with data can we capitalize on opportunities offered by data. Alas, the unfortu- nate truth is that teaching critical thinking is not necessarily a byproduct of teaching analytical methods [Jablonka, 2014]; masters of technical methods for summarizing data are not necessarily responsible, capable consumers of data. With this in mind, we at Virginia Tech bring our visual analytics research to the classroom. With the software that we developed, we synchronize teaching exploratory data analyses (EDA) with critical thinking. We refer to the software as Andromeda and it offers a way for analysts (e.g., students) to explore data visually and dynamically - in re- sponse to personal curiosities or feedback about the data - using multiple linear projections of high-dimensional data based on Weighted Multidimensional Scaling (WMDS) [Kruskal and Wish, 1978]. Crucially, students do not need to master WMDS to learn from high-dimensional data and create new visualizations. Rather, Andromeda enables Visual to Parametric Interaction (V2PI) [Leman et al., 2015; House et al., 2015] which means that when students interact directly with data visualizations (e.g., re-locate observations in a projection), Andromeda has the technology to interpret the interactions parametrically and update visualizations accordingly. Depending on the level of the course, students may or may not learn the details of WMDS. But, regardless of level, students have repeated opportunities to make conjectures, discover information in data, and process any implications of these discoveries. In this session, we will have an open discussion about critical thinking and the advantages interactive data visualizations may have for practicing critical thinking. Participants of the session will also use Andromeda for a short exercise and reflect on this experience. Requirement: Please bring a laptop with Chrome downloaded or pair with someone who does. Andromeda is a web-based software and we will use it during the breakout session.