tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post1907531899827965647..comments2024-03-18T08:41:12.468-04:00Comments on Thoughts on Public & Digital History by Adam Crymble: "Shock and Awe" Graphs in Digital HumanitiesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-80396155811662543342016-11-05T05:06:10.381-04:002016-11-05T05:06:10.381-04:00We would probably govern more of the common object...We would probably govern more of the common objects and values for the students that must be followed by the students which is even considered to be essential. <a href="http://www.plugindevelopment.net/best-wordpress-appointment-and-booking-plugins/" rel="nofollow">wordpress appointment plugin</a>Emerson Boonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06159643780206418287noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-40587214304247063502012-06-07T10:10:30.477-04:002012-06-07T10:10:30.477-04:00Another great article to add to the discussion. Th...Another great article to add to the discussion. This time by Carla Uriona<br />(http://www.viewtific.com/when-graphs-are-hard-to-understand/)<br /><br />Thanks for taking the time to join in Carla!Adam Crymblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16729063535227511371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-22517072775742772632012-06-01T03:13:16.987-04:002012-06-01T03:13:16.987-04:00There have been a number of excellent responses to...There have been a number of excellent responses to this post as well as articles on similar topics that have popped up around the web the last few days. As I'm sure some readers would like to read about the alternative perspective as I did, I thought I'd share the ones I've found here. If there are others please let me know as I'd love to hear more.<br /><br />* Mark Ravina "In Praise of 'Shock and Awe'" (http://clioviz.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/in-praise-of-shock-and-awe/)<br />* John Thiebault "Visualizations and Historical Arguments" (http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/evidence/theibault-2012-spring/)<br />* Liz S. "What Are We Doing With Our Visualizations?" (http://ludicanalytics.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/what-are-we-doing-with-our-visualizations/)Adam Crymblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16729063535227511371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-55460397907919316472012-05-28T05:09:21.927-04:002012-05-28T05:09:21.927-04:00Thanks for the comments Ted. I like your note that...Thanks for the comments Ted. I like your note that not all parts of graphs are meaning bearing. That's something I think many readers and interpreters of visualizations overlook or perhaps never thought of.Adam Crymblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16729063535227511371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-52517943188008474402012-05-25T05:21:00.081-04:002012-05-25T05:21:00.081-04:00Maybe it's also worth pointing out that this i...Maybe it's also worth pointing out that this isn't a general "viz" issue. I'd say it's specifically an issue with "graphs" in the mathematical (node-edge) sense of the word.<br /><br />And where social network graphs are concerned, I think the problem isn't restricted to "shock and awe," either. The more basic problem is that we're often not entirely sure what kind of relationality those graphs are representing.<br /><br />I think, before we start draw nodes and edges, we should ask ourselves whether "network" is really the right sort of abstraction in the case we're confronting. It sometimes is: e.g. the travel networks in a project like ORBIS really are networks. Ditto for the hypertextual structure Elijah modeled when he tackled TV Tropes. But there's a growing tendency to use network graphs to represent kinds of domain space that are far more abstract, and not necessarily network-like.Ted Underwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04012428899328561750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-82495536191782870692012-05-25T04:37:19.466-04:002012-05-25T04:37:19.466-04:00Thanks Trevor, Ben and Elijah for your comments.
...Thanks Trevor, Ben and Elijah for your comments.<br /><br />Trevor, thanks for the link to your post. I think you're right that we need to look at visualizations for the roles they fulfill rather than lump them all into a single category. In terms of added performance notes, I agree, but I wonder if our footnotes and appendices will be able to keep up with the increasingly technical nature of our analyses.<br /><br />Ben, you make a great point about stylish writing and that's a comparison I hadn't thought of before. I suppose it's not difficult through style or through the omission of details that challenge your position, to be equally deceptive through prose than through visualization. Though that's no excuse for letting our guard down on the visual elements of our research - not that you were suggesting we do!<br /><br />Elijah, I appreciate your concern and I think it's a valid one. I certainly am not anti-visualization and I'd disagree with anyone who views visualization as seductive but useless for knowledge transmission. I use visualizations frequently in my presentations and my written work. But something in me always wants to provide the raw data as well as notes on how I came to produce the visualization, if only to be transparent that yes, I did actually do this properly. And yes, this is a valid result. The graph is still a black box in most cases. I am not suggesting we get rid of the graph. But I'd like translucent sides on the box.<br /><br />Thanks again for your comments all three of you. You've given me more to think about, which is exactly what I had hoped for!Adam Crymblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16729063535227511371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-1073928877876569842012-05-25T04:27:24.958-04:002012-05-25T04:27:24.958-04:00What Ben said.
I'm enthusiastic about awesome...What Ben said.<br /><br />I'm enthusiastic about awesome visualizations when the awesomeness has a communicative function. But there are particular kinds of awesomeness that rarely do.<br /><br />E.g., with a force-directed graph, it's very tempting to show the thing evolving and organizing itself as an animation. Because that looks really cool. But unless the time axis of that animation is related to some actual time in the domain being modeled, it's actually a bit misleading -- at least in the sense that the showiest part of the viz is not a meaning-bearing part. (The only meaning it conveys is, arguably, explaining to the audience how a force-directed graph works.)<br /><br />That said, I honor and respect good viz craftsmanship. What Ben said -- once again. Form should follow function in this domain for aesthetic reasons as much as anything.Ted Underwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04012428899328561750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-38362850193212666202012-05-24T12:07:04.131-04:002012-05-24T12:07:04.131-04:00While I agree with your concern, my experience has...While I agree with your concern, my experience has been quite different. When presenting and discussing network visualizations in specific but data visualization in general, I've found that even well-framed and low-variable count data visualization is casually dismissed as aesthetically pleasing but useless for the transmission of knowledge. It's always been my fear that we'd end up in the situation you describe, since data viz is seductive and impressive to the lay audience.<br /><br />But so far, I see the heft of verbiage about data viz among digital humanities practitioners to be in criticism of it, and not in fawning support of it. As such, I'm actually a bit worried when I read well-written, insightful pieces like the one you've just posted, because you give those folks yet another reason to dismiss any data visualization that they don't comprehend as something that's obviously just incomprehensible.Elijah Meekshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07928472931791071393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-55048965456119906952012-05-24T11:55:07.257-04:002012-05-24T11:55:07.257-04:00I sometimes draw an analogy between visual present...I sometimes draw an analogy between visual presentation and stylish writing—neither is necessary for academic communication per se, but it's still good that historians place some premium on stylishness for various reasons (accessibility, because it makes everyone's work more enjoyable, because it's something else we can teach).<br /><br />That said, you're right that the shock and awe stuff can get over the top. (And 'shock and awe' is a great phrase for this.) I think a lot of the time we can make objections on aesthetic grounds alone, just as we can to the most overblown writing.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7029501467787683847.post-55364539043140797282012-05-24T11:18:05.492-04:002012-05-24T11:18:05.492-04:00Nice post. I continue to feel like visualizations ...Nice post. I continue to feel like visualizations need to justify their existence as <a href="http://www.visualizingthepast.org/2012/02/communication-or-discovery-which-approach-for-public-history/" rel="nofollow">either tools for communicating known things or tools for making discoveries</a>. <br /><br />The examples you are referring to seem to fall into the latter which means they need to come with significant performance notes. That is they need a good bit of explication and we need to be told how if this turned out different they might have been wrong. <br /><br />This is not just a problem for the humanities. I once was in a talk with a educational psychologist who told the audience that to visualize this you would need to think in 7 dimensional space. The implication there was that we should take their word for it.<br /><br />I feel like the production of a visualization is always, effectively, the production of a new artifact that needs to be given the same kind of scrutiny that some other artifact would be given.Trevor&Marjeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08410220000881756626noreply@blogger.com