Description:

Please note that all IPR colloquia this spring will be held simultaneously in person and online. Registration is only required for the online talks. IPR will be following local, state, federal, and University guidelines for events. Masking is optional, but encouraged.

"Thinking with Data Visualizations, Fast and Slow"

by Steve Franconeri, Professor of Psychology, Director of the Cognitive Science Program, and IPR Associate

Abstract: You discover patterns in a dataset, and seek to communicate their findings to a non-expert audience in an intuitive way. A well-designed visualization can lead to massive improvements in how efficiently an audience understands those data patterns. Franconeri uses interactive visual demonstrations to show the powerful capacity limits inherent to human perception of data visualizations. He then shows how good designs beat those limits, across data depictions in media, classrooms, papers, and presentations, and how design tricks and motivated cognition can bias data interpretation.

This is a presentation of research in progress, and the event is part of the spring 2022 IPR Fay Lomax Cook Colloquium Series.