Assignment 2

For this assignment, I wanted to look at several things at the same time.

First, I wanted to see if the top universities paid the professors better than other universities.

Second, I want to see how does the professors impact the university rankings.

The main target audience for this infographic are people who are considering to be a full-time professor in the future.

The first infographic showed a bar chart that overlaid each other, comparing the income of the different rank of professors and between universities. However, it seemed confusing to have bars overlaid each other, and it looked more like a stacked bar instead. I also wanted to give some bits of information of how the professor income compares to the average US citizen. But it didn't seem so right, as it would not show the income disparity between the average citizen. As advised by the class, I removed it.

The two sections below were to show the profile of the professor vs the average American citizen. On later thought, I felt that it did not contribute to answering the question. In fact, it could make it more confusing for the reader instead.

I decided to focus on several factors instead:

- I would keep the income of the professors and remove the profile side.

- I would focus on the research papers that these professors produced and the number of times that they were cited.

- I would also focus on the class size that these professors teach.

The bottom 2 factors affected university rankings directly, according to the Times Higher Education as research volume, income, citations, and reputation were 60% of the entire score. Class sizes were part of the learning environment, which were a total of 30%.

At the end of the first draft, I decided to change the colour palette of the infographic. The infographic looked very dark and dreary to me, and it did not make me want to look at it for long. I used seven colours (including black and white) to make the infographic later.

In this draft, I lightened up the colours and separated the bar charts. Instead of using the top 20 universities, I used the top 10 instead. I placed them along the same horizon as it was easier to see the difference in this case. 

If I had used 20 top universities, there would be 60 bars along one plane, and I thought that it would be very confusing to the reader on first glance.

Based on the rankings and on the income data which I attained from The Chronicle of Higher Education, I input the data into Many Eyes. I thought that I could not achieve much from that because universities are ranked, and it is very hard to place ranks on a chart without being too confusing.

I ended up using the simple, but easy to understand bar chart above the rest, as I believed it showed the clearest idea on the first glance.

I went to search for the data on the papers produced and the number of citations that the university produced. It took a long and arduous time to finally find it on the Essential Science Indicators.

I took the data and placed it into Many Eyes once again. I looked through the data, and thought that a line chart would be the best (at first) because I was able to show the changes in the number of papers produced over time. However, there wasn't much change along the lines, and Harvard University overwhelmed the rest of the universities.

It made the white space take centre stage and I did not want that to be the focus of the infographic. I looked through the various graphs in Many Eyes and came across the Bubble Chart.

The Bubble Chart managed to show the number of papers published. However, it was difficult to tell the difference in sizes on first glance, especially for sizes such as UCB and Stanford. I was only able to tell that Harvard produced the most number of papers.

I decided to use the tree graph for the infographic:

The tree graph was clearer (to me), as it compared the number of research papers that each university produced. In addition, the difference in gradient meant that I could tell the areas which produced more papers easily. Compared to the Bubble chart, I felt that this represented the data clearer.

I traced over the image using Photoshop shapes and added in the text and detail:

This allowed the reader to see the university, the papers and the citations clearly. However, a static infographic like this makes it hard to show the number of times cited and the number of papers produced. An interactive infographic would be better where hovering the mouse would show us another graph of the highest number of citations. I had considered putting two tree graphs, but I thought it would look messy and confusing instead. I included the details of the citations, and believe that readers would be able to easily see differences such as MIT produced fewer papers, but were cited more.

Finally, I found data on the classroom size. I was unable to get the full data on the number of classes exactly, but I managed to get the percentage.

Instead of using a pie chart (as there would have to be 10), I decided to use a stacked bar instead. The totals would add to 100%, and we would be able to see the difference in them. To make it clearer, I added the numbers for easy reference.

The result allowed us to see the difference between universities. For example, you can see that Harvard, UC, Yale, Columbia all have a greater percentage of smaller sized classes.

The percentage scale does show us some information, but numbers would be better. Numbers would be able to show us the number of classes as compared to the size of classes.

For example, it would not be fair to compare between Caltech and Harvard if Caltech only has 300 classes in total, while Harvard has 3000 classes.

As the figures are in percentage, I was unable to calculate the professor to student ratio. Nonetheless, this gives us an indication that the professors in certain universities tend to teach smaller sized classes. It is not as clear as I want it to be, but based on the data, this is the best that I can do.

Finally, I added a section on 'What have these professors helped to achieve?'. While it does not directly address the university rankings, it continues to show a professors contributions, apart from producing papers and teaching classes. It shows the people that they have groomed, and the awards that some of the faculty have achieved.

I went through all the universities websites to look for accolades and achievements. I also ensured that professors from these universities contributed to this.

For example, I did not include 'Rhodes Scholars' because they were achievements on the individual international student going to the university, and not any work of the professors. The rest were results of what the professors what taught, and the people that they have groomed. Some may feel that having 17 astronauts is not a direct achievement of the professor, but I felt that it should be included as it was something that professors had a part to play. Without them, the students would not be able to get to where they are as easily.

Finally, I had a short list of the top 20 universities and their domestic and world ranking.

This helps to reinforce the point that the professors were instrumental in helping the universities achieve their ranks, whether it be in research or teaching.

I ended up with this infographic which showed about the work and remuneration of these professors. 

First, I showed how much they were getting as compared to their counterparts in other universities. Second, I showed what they did, produce papers, teach, made some achievements. This allowed readers to see how did professors contribute to the university ranking, and how they were paid.

The readers would see that professors in these universities do get paid more, but they have achieved much more, and have produced much more as compared to any other university.

Assignment 1 Final + Reflection

For the final version, I've only made one minor change, which is to add a legend for the timeline of extreme poverty by region. The rest of the changes are merely colour/design changes. The legend would help readers know that those items in grey are global campaigns.

I've thought that this assignment gave us an idea on how to do confirmative analysis. From what I know, confirmative analysis has to do with time, and a given set of information. Using the information that I had found online, I compared the level of poverty with global poverty campaigns.

While we are able to see the campaigns versus the level of poverty, it is not exactly indicative of the campaign's work. It does not mean that the campaigns are effective, or if the campaign had a large impact on poverty. This would leave out other factors, including philanthropy and inflation.

While the level of extreme poverty has gone down, this does not take into account the cost of goods, which may be increasing. This also does not take in any form of taxation, or other kind of tariffs that producers may face.

The purpose was to show social mapping according to Charles Booth, and it was done using the world map. The timeline was in addition to the world map, to help readers see the level of poverty, as the world map alone may not provide sufficient information.

Overall, I thought that this assignment helped me to understand more about the use of data that is freely available in the public domain. It has also allowed me to be able to perform confirmation analysis on the subject of extreme poverty. While I am unable to show other causes and issues with regards to poverty, I believed that I have maximized the space to provide a clear and concise infographic on poverty.

Assignment 1 Draft

The aim of this infographic is to show the areas that are faced with the highest levels of poverty, the efforts done to reduce poverty, and the comparison between the poor and the wealthy.

In this second draft that I've completed, I've added in the world map, as well as a short comparison between poverty and wealth at the bottom of the page.

In the timeline, I've decided to pit the timeline of poverty by region with the global campaigns aimed at reducing poverty. This would give us a better idea of the impact of the campaigns, and if the campaigns actually did make any significant impact on poverty.

There was not much information about campaigns prior to 2000, where the UN started a campaign to eradicate poverty by 2015. After which, there were many large global campaigns on poverty.

In this infographic, the first two sections relied mainly on colour, with the world map in colour to show the different levels of poverty. In addition, I added in the top 5 countries with the greatest and least poverty. This would provide additional information on top of the colours.

The use of colours in the timeline helps to show the different regions easily. I've also added the number of people in poverty in the top righthand corner to show the difference.

The facts and figures titles have been removed, and the pictograms and text are able to show the comparison between rich and poor in one glance. I've also taken the advice of fellow classmates to change the colours of some of the pictograms and text below to show that each icon is not related to the timeline above. This section of the infographic would be able to show the wealth discrepancy between the rich and the poor, as poverty alone does not tell much without comparison.

Assignment 1 Concept

The concept for this idea came from the milestone 1889 Social Mapping by Charles Booth.

Charles Booth had created street maps of London, showing the poverty and wealth by color coding.

I had also planned to do the same by including a world map. This would show the poverty levels of the entire world, instead of only London. It would be difficult to show a wealth map though. If the gini coefficient of a country is extremely high, there would be a high level of poverty and a high level of wealth as well. As such, I've decided to use a map to only show poverty.

Charles Booth social mapping of poverty in London

At the initial point of time, I could not find a good quality AI format map to mark out the countries of poverty. Most of the maps did not seem to fit the theme or were too low resolution (jpeg format) to use for this infographic. I would have made changes in a later version.

In addition to that, I've also created the timeline to show the level of poverty decline. We've always heard about the decline in poverty, but nothing much about it. We do not exactly know how far have it gone down, or how many people are actually in poverty. As such, I had a map with the data taken from the World Bank to show the levels of poverty.

Again, I am unable to show the levels of wealth because 1) there was no data on wealth, 2) it may be confusing to have 12 lines on a single map.

Nonetheless, the information on the timeline is insufficient to show the differences in the rich and the poor. I made changes (in the facts and figures section) in a later version to show the wealth disparity between the extremely rich, and the extremely poor.

With three types of information (map, timeline, facts and figures), I thought that it would provide the reader with the greatest amount of information, while reducing the cognitive load to understand the infographic due to use of pictograms and colours.