Statistics 744, McMaster University

data collection

Schermann (2019); Skau (2012)

• data sources reliable and verifiable
• due diligence in checking sources
• give attribution
• beware of sampling bias (Cairo 2014)

data analysis

• transparent/reproducible analysis
  • ethical or professional?
• beware snooping/hacking

design

• telling a story vs the story
• journalistic, again
• Cairo (2014)

is poor design immoral?

When a designer chooses a graphic form to represent data just because she likes it, while ignoring evidence that may lead her to choose a more appropriate one, her act is morally wrong. It’s not wrong just because she’s not been virtuous or because there is a deontological rule against inappropriate charts, but because her act will likely have negative consequences, such as confusion, obfuscation and misunderstanding." \[see [“rule utilitarianism”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_utilitarianism)\]

are you responsible for viewers’ interpretations?

Cairo (2020) on “sharpiegate”

accessibility

• twitter thread

alt-text:

“A set of stairs where each step is a glowing, translucent, glass-like structure jutting out at different angles. Each step has no back wall and gaps in the flooring before the next step. A railing is nested into a wall on one side and the other side is completely open with no railing or wall at all. A stove top is within a short fall from the open side of the stairs.”

thread on accessibility (summary)

• contrast, colour (4.5:1 contrast for text, 3:1 contrast for geometries)
• interactivity can be tricky
• use standard designs!

alt-text

• always provide “alt-text” for online images
• challenging/time-consuming
• Lundgard and Satyanarayan (2022): analyzing semantic content of alt-text
  • automation possible, but possibly worse than nothing

tradeoffs

• think about tradeoffs
• maximize broad utility

references

Cairo, Alberto. 2014. “Ethical Infographics.” IRE Journal 37 (2): 25–27. https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqgmg02yz0pgju4/EthicalInfographics.pdf.

———. 2020. “If Anything on This Graphic Causes Confusion, Discard the Entire Product.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 40 (2): 91–97. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2019.2961716.

Lundgard, Alan, and Arvind Satyanarayan. 2022. “Accessible Visualization via Natural Language Descriptions: A Four-Level Model of Semantic Content,” January. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2021.3114770.

Schermann, Michael. 2019. “Ethics (Chapter 5).” In A Reader on Data Visualization. https://mschermann.github.io/data_viz_reader/ethics.html.

Skau, Drew. 2012. “A Code of Ethics for Data Visualization Professionals.” Rock Content. https://rockcontent.com/blog/a-code-of-ethics-for-data-visualization-professionals/.