Students’ Prior Knowledge of Data Visualization

Undergraduate students who enroll in a data science course already have exposure to visualization in different contexts, and hold beliefs about acceptable standards of visualization. When confronted with non-traditional examples of visualization, such as the ones found in the popular blog Dear Data http://www.dear-data.com/, their reactions are mixed. Some are surprised by the creativity of the process and the beauty of the outcome; others are frustrated with the need to pay attention to the details to decipher the content, due to the novelty of the visualizations. In this paper, we use the reflections of a group of 21 undergraduate students to outline the kinds of beliefs and knowledge about visualizations that they bring to the classroom. Additionally, we present some examples of visualization work that followed the reading of the Dear Data blog, indicating how the reading might have influenced the amount of information students tried to depict in their visualizations.