CS 524: Visualization and Visual Analytics II, Spring 2011

Andy Johnson

Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL)
2032 Engineering Research Facility (ERF) and 918 SEO

EVL phone (312) 996-3002     email: aej at evl.uic.edu
EVL fax   (312) 413-7585       WWW: www.evl.uic.edu/aej

office hours: Tuesday and Thursday from 4:45 to 6:00 in 2032 ERF, and by appointment

32362 Lecture - Tuesday / Thursday from 3:30 to 4:45pm in 2068 ERF

highly recommended		recommended
The Visualization Toolkit: An Object Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics, 4th Ed by Schroeder, Martin, and Lorens		Information Visualization: Perception for Design, 2nd ed by Colin War
and also the following reports ...
Visualization in Scientific Computing - 1987	NIH/NSF Visualization Research Challenges - 2006	Visualization and Knowledge Discovery - 2007	Illuminating the Path - The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics - 2008

and you may also want to take a look at Edward Tufte's four books: Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence

(may change depending on the number of students in the class)

You should have passed CS 488 (Computer Graphics I) or CS 424 (Visualization and Visual Analytics I) to take CS 526. or have equivalent knowledge. CS 488 talks about how computer graphics is done behind the scenes; CS 424 talks about visualization and interation in 2D; this course concentrates on visualization and interaction 3D. Knowledge of OpenGL is very useful but not required.

Standard departmental disclaimer: If you do not have the prerequisites for this course make sure that you drop this course right away. The department will verify the prerequisites for all students registered in this course during the first few weeks of the term and if you do not have the prerequisites, you will be notified and dropped from the course after the normal drop/add period. By that time, you will not be able to enroll in any new course.

From the course guide: State of the art in computer graphics and interactive techniques: three-dimensional surface and volumetric models. Each time the course is taught the focus is on different topics. This course is going to focus on scientific visualization (including information visualization and medical visualization.)

Attendance is very important, but not mandatory. Part of your grade will be based on your in-class participation (ie asking good questions, making good comments) so please take that into account.

I put all of my notes on the web, however these notes should not be considered 'official' until the day of class. If I make any major changes to a page afterwards, then I will announce it in class and note it at the bottom of each page. I try to ensure that the notes on the web accurately reflect the lecture, but its what is discussed in class 'that counts', not what's written in the notes.

• Each student will make one short presentation and one paper presentation during the term.
• Each student will do three projects including three more presentations about those projects during the term.

More on the presentations

• The short presentations will focus on current visualization trends in a variety of fields that were not covered in class.
  
• The paper presentations will focus more on current research on implementing scientific / information / medical visualization. You can look for papers on the web and through books such as "Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think"
• The presentations will be done individually, and are expected to be be professional - you don't need to dress up, but the A/V should be good, it must be rehearsed, it must be on-time, and the audience should learn from the presentation.
• The paper presentations will be 25 minutes long with an additional 10 minutes of questions at the end, the project presentations will be 10 minutes long with an additional 10 minutes of questions at the end
• See the link on the course web site for the set of html files on how to give good presentations, so you know what I mean by a 'good' presentation.
• You are expected to create your presentation slides yourself and not reuse slides from someone else - you are giving your talk, not giving their talk
  
• Whatever you do, don't read the paper to your audience.
• Have a few slides at the beginning of your talk to give the background of the authors of the paper so we know about their past work and their research interests.
  
• Demonstrations (movies, animations, etc) usually are helpful in promoting understanding
• If you put a formula onto your slides you better be able to explain it
• Be sure to have a backup plan in case the technology fails. I will never intentionally take away technology, but as in real life, technology fails, so be prepared.
• Presentation slots will be randomly assigned, you may trade slots with other students as you wish as long as both agree to the trade and you notify Andy about it at least a week in advance.
• Each person will need to propose a paper topic and have it approved by Andy. If two people ask to present the same material then the first person who's email arrives to Andy wins.
• Everyone in the class is expected to read the appropriate material before coming to class so we can have a good discussion and learn from the presentations and the papers. As part of this each presenter is expected to make their paper available to the class at least one week ahead of time either in pdf or html format via the web.
• There are 4 goals for the paper presentations. 1) You should learn a good amount about an area that is of interest to you, 2) The audience should learn a fair amount about that area and learn about what is cutting edge work in scientific visualization, 3) You get to practice giving a paper presentation for when you present your own papers, and 4) You get to watch other people give good / bad / mediocre presentations and learn from what you see and hear.
  

More on the projects

• Two or more of the three programming projects in the class will make use of the Visualization Toolkit. You can access VTK's functionality through a varity of means - C++, Java, Tcl/tk, Python, etc, and on a variety of platforms. I do not care what language / platform you use as long as you can demonstrate your projects functionality to the class and to me in person at EVL.
• The projects are due at 11:59pm of the due date. You will be making a short presentation about your project to the class. If the project is not done then you can't present it, so late assignments lose 50% per day - if something is turned in within 24 hours after the deadline then the max score is 50 points out of 100; after that its a 0. Assignment deadlines will not be extended for any reason other than a headline in the Tribune or Sun Times describing an army of undead ghouls walking the streets of Chicago eating people.
  

There will be a final exam at the end of the term covering the material presented in class. This exam will most likely be a programming project, but may be a written exam.

The final grade will be calculated as follows		Letter grades
45% - Projects (15% each)		A: 87% - 100%
20% - Paper Presentation		B: 75% -  86%
10% - short presentation		C: 62% -  74%
10% - In-class participation		D: 50% -  61%
15% - Final Exam		E: 00% -  49%

Note: that you must get a passing (D or better) grade on all projects and the final to get a passing grade in the course.

Also note: I only give Incompletes for serious hospitalization issues which come up suddenly near the end of the term.

Also also note: I have no qualms about giving Ds or Es in a graduate level course, though the vast majority of the grades have tended to be As and Bs. I also have no qualms about failing graduate students for cheating - so be good.