Concepts and Tools for Data Analysis and Visualization

Introduction to data visualization covering major concepts, specific tools for data analysis, and skill application in a final project.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Sijia Yang

Summary

1 / 3

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.91 GPA, 97.5% A/AB (n=79 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.96 GPA, 97.6% A/AB (n=84 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.73 GPA, 85.5% A/AB (n=69 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Investigate practical and ethical challenges of collecting, managing, analyzing and presenting data.

  • Summarize the basic grammar and principles for data visualization.

  • Handle the R language for managing data and creating visualization.

  • Compute basic statistical concepts in data analysis and visualization.

  • Practice handling and visualizing tabular, textual (e.g., social media posts), and geospatial data.

  • Develop a research study.

Source: UW Guide 1 UW Guide 2

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
JOURN/LIS 677

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2021: 3.73 GPA, 86.4% A/AB (n=22 letter grades); Fall 2022: 3.75 GPA, 83.3% A/AB (n=12 letter grades); Spring 2024: 3.86 GPA, 96.9% A/AB (n=32 letter grades). Includes jointly taught sections.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

SIJIA YANG is recorded teaching in Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2024. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 250
LEC 002Classroom Instruction0 / 250
LEC 003Classroom Instruction0 / 250
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 30
LEC 002Classroom Instruction0 / 30
LEC 003Classroom Instruction0 / 30

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records

Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.91 GPA, 97.5% A/AB (n=79 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.96 GPA, 97.6% A/AB (n=84 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.73 GPA, 85.5% A/AB (n=69 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Major concepts of information and data visualization
  • Basic grammar and principles of data visualization
  • Practical and ethical challenges of data collection, management, analysis, and presentation
  • Tabular, textual, and geospatial data visualization

Skills

  • Using specific tools for data analysis and visualization
  • Managing data and creating visualizations using R
  • Handling and visualizing tabular, textual, and geospatial data
  • Computing basic statistical concepts in data analysis
  • Developing a research study

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1280 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Selected offering source records
JOURN/LIS 677 · Spring 2027

Concepts and Tools for Data Analysis and Visualization

Recorded 2026-10-14
JOURN/LIS 677 · Spring 2027

Concepts and Tools for Data Analysis and Visualization

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records
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Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Model & dataset provenance
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  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "74a7f2ff9da93813bf5f6170bb7d443247fb63a6a82ffd088875058e55f1fe06",
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}