Time Schedule:
Eleanor E. Williams
OCEAN 506
Seattle Campus
Lectures, discussions, and work on selected problems of an interdisciplinary nature. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
Class description
Mondays and Wednesdays, 8:30-10am in OCN 425.
An enormous part of being a successful scientist is communicating science, both in the research arena and in the classroom. Though writing and speaking skills are essential, figures tell the story. "Communicating with Figures: Principles and Practice" is a new discussion-based seminar for grad students in earth sciences.
We will discuss and experiment with choices for individual figure elements (axes, labels, lines, fonts, colors) as well as the effect of different plot types on the science result displayed. The second half of the course will focus on choosing and arranging a set of figures to motivate a story, in a paper, poster or presentation format. We will explore standard options for information organization in the literature, evaluate examples from scientific posters in our departments, and then apply what we've learned to our own research projects and datasets available.
Student learning goals
Students will be able to critique and evaluate good (and bad) information design.
Students will create their own effective figures.
Students will apply principles of information organization to create a story/motivate a hypothesis using figures.
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Some familiarity with a software package for figure preparation (Matlab, Excel, Ferret, IDL, Adobe Illustrator) is expected. It is also expected that all students are involved in research and have access to data for analysis and display. (If this is not the case, please contact the instructor to see if we can work around it.)
Class assignments and grading
Out-of-class assignments will include short readings on the topic of figure design, literature searches for figure examples, and figure creation and redesign on a software program of your choice.
In class activities will include critique of figures using a variety of methods, discussion of principles of figure design, on paper sketches of figure redesigns, wandering hallways evaluation poster design, and making short presentations on students' research topics.
* Class participation * Process of learning to critique and create figures, and short projects
