DS 4200 — Information Presentation and Visualization
4 semester hoursUndergraduateLectureNUpath ADNUpath WIusually offered: fall, spring, summertypical days: M/W/ThBostonOnlineOnlineTraditional
Introduces foundational principles, methods, and techniques of visualization to enable creation of effective information representations suitable for exploration and discovery. Covers the design and evaluation process of visualization creation, visual representations of data, relevant principles of human vision and perception, and basic interactivity principles. Studies data types and a wide range of visual data encodings and representations. Draws examples from physics, biology, health science, social science, geography, business, and economics. Emphasizes good programming practices for both static and interactive visualizations. Creates visualizations in Excel and Tableau as well as R, Python, and open web-based authoring libraries. Requires programming in Python, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Requires extensive writing including documentation, explanations, and discussions of the findings from the data analyses and the visualizations.
Prerequisites
Offering history
| Term | Sections | Enrolled | Capacity | Full | Open seats/section |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2023 | 1 | 46 | 49 | 94% | 3.0 |
| Spring 2024 | 2 | 205 | 208 | 99% | 1.5 |
| Summer A 2024 | 1 | 45 | 50 | 90% | 5.0 |
| Fall 2024 | 3 | 164 | 287 | 57% | 41.0 |
| Spring 2025 | 3 | 282 | 285 | 99% | 1.0 |
| Summer A 2025 | 1 | 63 | 65 | 97% | 2.0 |
| Summer B 2025 | 1 | 61 | 65 | 94% | 4.0 |
| Fall 2025 | 3 | 182 | 219 | 83% | 12.3 |
| Spring 2026 | 3 | 269 | 327 | 82% | 19.3 |
Snapshots from scheduled scrapes — not live seat availability. "Full" can exceed 100% when sections over-enroll.
Meeting times
Share of recent sections by weekday: M 87% · T 3% · W 77% · Th 75% · F 0%
Common patterns: MWR (65% of sections), MW (12% of sections), async (9% of sections), MR (7% of sections), M (3% of sections), TR (3% of sections) — in patterns, R means Thursday
Professors
Fall
- Xiaoyi Yang (88% of students) · reviews
- Cody Dunne (12% of students) · reviews
Spring
- Xiaoyi Yang (100% of students) · reviews
Summer A
- Lace Padilla (58% of students) · reviews
- Michelle Borkin (42% of students) · reviews
Summer B
- Racquel Fygenson (100% of students) · reviews
Percentages are each professor's average share of the season's enrolled students in recent terms.
Links
Official catalog (DS course descriptions) · Student reviews on RateMyHusky · All DS courses · Plan it at numap.app