EECE 5642 Data Visualization
Spring 2025
Instructor: This class will be taught by Prof. Y. Raymond Fu
Office: 403 Dana
Phone: (617) 373- 7328
Email: [email protected]
Home page: http://www.ece.neu.edu/~yunfu/
Electronic communication: We will use Canvas for posting assignments, notes, any on-line discussions, and other forms of electronic
communication. It will be assumed that you check your email regularly, and it is your responsibility to make sure that the instructor has a good
email address for you. In particular you should make sure that the email address that Canvas has for you is one you check regularly.
Prereq. Basic programming skills, knowledge of fundamental data structures and algorithms
Teaching Assistant: Yue Bai, SMILE Lab, Room 427, Richards Hall, Email: [email protected]
Jianglin Lu, SMILE Lab, Room 427, Richards Hall, Email: [email protected]
Class and Office Hours: Session 01 Class Hours: Wednesday and Friday 11:45am - 1:25pm in Richards Hall 325 Session V30 Class Hours: Tuesday and Friday 9:50am - 11:30am in Dodge Hall 170 Session V35 Class Hours: Online only
TA Office Hours: Friday 1:30pm-2:30pm (https://northeastern.zoom.us/j/93151241339)
Instructor Office Hours: Request by email only
Textbook
Class lecture slides will be provided by the instructor, either printout or electronic file. Students will be asked to find more self-learning content from Internet resources. Recommended textbooks are:
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2nd edition), Edward Tufte, Graphics Press, ISBN 0961392142.
- Visualizing Data, Ben Fry, O'Reilly, ISBN: 0596514557.
- Show Me the Numbers, by Stephen Few, Analytics Press, ISBN: 0970601999.
- Data Visualization (principles and practice), Alexandru C. Telea., A K Peters, Ltd.
- Information Visualization (perception for design) (2nd Edition), Colin Ware, Elsevier Press.
Catalog Course Description: Introduction to relevant topics and concepts in visualization, including computer graphics, visual data representation, physical and human vision models, numerical representation of knowledge and concept, animation techniques, pattern analysis, and computational methods. Tools and techniques for practical visualization. Elements of related fields including computer graphics, human perception, computer vision, imaging science, multimedia, human‐computer interaction, computational science, and information theory. Covers examples from a variety of scientific, medical, interactive multimedia, and artistic applications. Hands‐on exercises and projects.
Grading Students will be graded on class participation, three assignments, a mid-term examination, a mid-term project and a final project and presentation. The final grade will be composed as follows:
Class Participation.................. 10% Homework............................. 30% Mid-Term Exam..................... 20% Final Project........................... 40%
Course Topics and Schedules
Week Date Tuesday (Wednesday) Friday HW Exam
1 Jan 7(8) & 10 Introduction Data Representation
2 Jan 14(15) & 17 Image Model and Human Vision System Visual Cognition HW 1
3 Jan 21(22) & 24 Visual Perception [TA] Visualization Design
4 Jan 28(Jan 29) & 31 Trees and Networks, HW1 Recitation [TA] Color and Visualization Tools HW 2
5 Feb 4(5) & 7 Dimensionality Reduction Table and Graph
6 Feb 11(12) & 14 Mid-term Exam (Take-home exam, no class) HW2 Recitation, Midterm Recitation [TA] HW 3 Midterm
7 Feb 18(19) & 21 Paper Discussion Paper Discussion
8 Feb 25(Feb 26) & 28 Paper Discussion Paper Discussion/Proposal Presentations
9 Mar 4(5) & 7 Spring Break, No Class Spring Break, No Class HW 4
10 Mar 11(12) & 14 Maps and Geolocation[TA] Interactive Visualization [Guest]
11 Mar 18(19) & 21 Image-based Rendering [Guest] Proposal Presentations
12 Mar 25(26) & 28 HW4 Recitation [TA] Proposal Presentations
13 Apr 1(2) & 4 Human and Face Visualization Final Project Presentations
14 Apr 8(9) & 11 Final Project Presentations Final Project Presentations
15 Apr 15(16) & 18 (^) Final Project Presentations Final Project Presentations 16 Apr 23 Final Report Due at 4/23 5pm Final
- Guest lecturers will be invited to present some topics if funding is available for honoraria or expenses. Final Project The final project has two options: visualization demo design or software tool design. The basic idea of the two directions is the same which is to collect some scientific data and visualize them. The demo design mainly focuses on the visual animations, 2D/3D graphics, video making, and computer vision based visualization techniques. The tool design is mainly to design and implement a visualization tool that can analyze the data with any kind of visualization concepts or formats, summarize some useful results/conclusions, answer questions, and provide suggestions or comments. The data should be real data, which can be either collected by individual or borrowed from somewhere (with permission and acknowledgement). Students can use any
API or programming language they like. Students can work on the project by themselves or team up with other students in the class. The team members cannot be more than two.
To grade the final project, three aspects will be considered. 1) proposal presentation (20%); 2) final project presentation (30%); 3) final project report and software package (50%). Late submission without instructor permission may not be considered. Typically, we do not anticipate that the grades for each team member will be different. However, we reserve the right to assign different grades to each team member if the efforts or contributions they make are apparently different and unbalanced. Bonus points may be earned if the project shows significant novelty and large potentials for real-world applications. Those projects may get our guidance for further paper publications.
Proposals and Reports Please consider following contents when you prepare for your proposals and final reports:
- Project title
- Team members names, affiliations and emails (one or two members)
- The project option you choose (demo or tool)
- Motivations of the project
- Real-world applications
- Data source and background (in detail)
- Tools and programming languages used in the project
- Contributions of the work (the work by the authors)
- Novelty of the work (optional)
- Visualization techniques (need to present details)
- Division of work for each team member
- Challenges and solutions
- Future work, extensions, improvements
- Additional comments
- References (including all papers, links, source codes, etc.)
Project Presentations PPT or PDF slides and demos can be used for final project presentations.
Submission The presentation slides, the final report and software package should be submitted to Canvas on time, 5pm on April 23. Policy: If submitting latter than 5pm without permission, we will reduce the score with a penalty of 20%. If submitting after midnight of today without permission, we do not count it as a successful submission.