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Digital Scholarship

Resources and tools to support digital scholarship/digital humanities projects.

Projects

Things to Consider

Do you need a data visualization?

  • If the significance of the data can be concisely expressed with statistics, then you may not need a data visualization.

What's the right data visualization for your work?

  • Who is the audience?
  • Focus on reducing the cognitive load.
  • Avoid too much data.
  • Avoid 3D visualizations.
  • Utilize a tool that helps with identifying suitable data visualizations for your needs, such as Data Viz Project.

Ethically represent the data.

  • Don't distort the range of data represented.
  • Don't cherry pick what is represented by the data visualization.
  • Clearly label the data.

Think about colors.

  • According to the National Eye Institute, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have color vision deficiencies.  Using colors alone to express data prevents some from understanding the data being visualized.
    • Utilize colorblind friendly color combinations
    • "Use different shapes, patterns, textures, or labels" (Ferreira)
  • "High-contract color pairings cause viewers to perceive greater degrees of data disparity." (Bowers)

Tell a Story

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Reference

Numbers Shouldn't Lie: An Overview of Common Data Visualization Mistakes (Micah Bowers)

Two Simple Steps to Create Colorblind-Friendly Data Visualizations (CR Ferreira)

Resources

Illinois State University users can access Power BI via Office 365. The desktop version can be downloaded via Software Center.

For detailed documentation on how to use Power BI, please consult https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/

Tools