Interactive, Dynamic Visualization in R and JavaScript

Github repo with notes, code and data

The DSI’s Winter 2019 workshop series focuses on Data Visualization, from principles and best practices to implementation with various technologies. Attendance at all sessions is recommended as concepts and materials build throughout the quarter. All workshops will be recorded and links will be posted here shortly after their conclusion. Learners are recommended to watch any missed workshops to best prepare for subsequent sessions.

Building off of the concepts in the earlier workshops this quarter, DSI Director Professor Duncan
Temple Lang and postdoc Jane Carlen will introduce packages for creating interactive data
visualizations using JavaScript/D3 with implementations in R and/or Python. The workshop will
present illustrative examples of the functionality of several different packages and walk through the R code used to build example interactive visualizations.

The second part of the workshop will explore what underlies these plots,
specifically the JavaScript code and libraries such as D3.
We’ll show how to explore these in the Web browser and modify aspects
of the plots. This provides the foundations
for thinking about customizing plots and building more general and customized dynamic, interactive
Web pages and applications.

The last half hour of the workshop will allow time for individual Q&A.

After this workshop learners should be able to:

• Assess which tools are best for a particular application.
• Create dynamic, interactive visualizations in R for display in a Web browser.
• Understand the basics of how dynamic Web pages work.
• Explore and experiment with adapting dynamic visualizations for new purposes.

Prerequisites & Target audience

This workshop is aimed at researchers (students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, staff) who are working with data and using graphics for exploratory analyses and scholarly communication (i.e., publications). Learners should attend or view recordings of the prior workshops in the series. Learners should be comfortable working in R and should bring a laptop with a working version of R and RStudio installed. Prior to attending, registered learners will receive an email with a list of R packages to pre-install.