Research through the Visualization of Health Data and Information

The course is intended to provide a hands‐on introduction to delivering data visualizations to serve as a critical lens through which individual and population level health can be examined. The course will combine concepts and theory in data visualization and exploration and practice to prepare the learner to begin using graphics and statistics to explore data, find and construct a narrative, and share findings in ways colleagues and decision-makers can readily understand and act upon. Topics may include: (a) principles of human perception and attention that inform visualization design; (b) The use of visualization to explore data and discover a narrative; (c) the use of visualization to communicate effectively with others; 4) the development of practical skills, including preparing datasets and applying programing language to analyze data and produce visualizations. 

Interaction with practitioners/guest speakers is an integral part of this course as a way for students to understand real data and information challenges. Concept lectures and case studies concentrate on learning to scope and manage complex data science projects. Lab work will focus on gaining competency with data science/visualization tools and techniques (e.g., Jupyter Notebook, R programming language) applied to an integrated health-relevant data set.