Numbers, Words and Colors | MIT World

About the Lecture

Tools developed by Martin Wattenberg and his associate Fernanda Viégas, have changed the way people look at and use visualizations, by empowering and equipping users with the methodology needed to ask different questions. Wattenberg, whose background is in math and computer science, asks how the humanities have influenced the evolution of data visualization and then answers with several examples from his own work.

Web Seer compares Google's "auto-suggest" feature in one-to-one, weighted comparisons such as "why doesn't he…" and "why doesn't she…" The resultant text image uses the size of arrows and words to reflect frequency, demonstrating how text can impart meaning.

Another Wattenberg/Viégas collaboration is Many Eyes, a social media tool and Web site that has "democratized" powerful visualization systems by putting them in the hands of general audiences. This tool lets users visualize data in numerous ways, from scatterplots and bar charts to tree maps and stack graphs.

Word Tree, a visualization technique that lets users pick a word or phrase from a data set, shows the different contexts in which it appears via a tree-like branching structure. Chimera takes care of the "boilerplate problem" by examining large collections of text, such as contracts, and pointing out identical phrases. Seeing results arranged in faux 3D "skyscrapers" clearly illustrates levels of recurrence. Although Word Tree andChimera are fundamentally repetition searches, they are important tools for semantic analysis: simple, but revealing.

The idea behind Phrase Net is to expose a text's underlying network; this visualization tool diagrams the relationships between different words used in a text. It uses a simple form of pattern matching to provide multiple views of the concepts contained a book, speech, or poem.

Another Wattenberg/ Viégas collaboration is Fleshmap, "an inquiry into human desire." The relationship between the body and its visual and verbal representation are explored in a series of artistic studies employing song lyrics and body imagery. Flickr Flow, Wattenberg explains, is an experiment whose materials are color and time. Software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos of Boston taken during each month of the year and plotted those colors on a wheel creating a "river of meaning."
Wattenberg addresses questions regarding the impact of race in personified visualizations, and his subjective motives in selecting particular data for analysis. He admits that his "hard drive is loaded with failed visualizations," but emphasizes that the visualization process should be one of trial and error. As for encouraging the development of visual literacy, Wattenberg concludes, "as visualization becomes part of the discourse and people realize, 'this is something that's powerful, it can help me make my case in life,' they'll learn… I'm hoping for education and good, old-fashioned human brain power."




Numbers, Words and Colors | MIT World

Bethlehem

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Cognitive Styles in Arab and American Adult Learners Using Eye-Tracking

Handbook of Cross-cultural Psychology: Social behavior and applications ... By John W. Berry, Ype H. Poortinga, Marshall H. Segall, Janak Pandey

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Book Summary

This is Dale Carnegie's summary of his book, from 1936

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six ways to make people like you

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Win people to your way of thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Dale Carnegie Page

Coconut Girl and the Mirror

Once upon a time coconut girl ran into a child holding a rock,
The child’s eyes turned into a big mirror
Coconut girl saw the mirror for the first time in her life.
A moment of self-discovery
She didn’t like what she saw
She was scared
she smashed the mirror
100,000 pieces the mirror scattered
Each one has the same picture: Coconut girl
A l00, 000 coconut girls

The child died on the cross
Went to heaven
A whole generation passed
The 100,000 mirrors grew up mirror trees
Each with 100,000 more mirrors with brown girls on them
Mirrors speak; I am your identity, I am your grandmother El hajjeh, back in the old country
Look into my eyes; I’m your mirror
Erase me from your diary; you can’t erase me from your genes.
Brown on brown
She tore down grandmother’s picture but grandmother still existed
The more she avoided looking into the child’s brown eyes the more she was dissolving
Living in denial is the best cure
She turned off the history
She preached; I’m felicity, I am beige now.
I’m the saint of all saints,
I study people,
I’m above everyone
I’m exotic,
I am hummous,
I am tabbouleh.
I’m just another coconut girl
I tell people what is right and what is wrong
And in the meantime I uproot me

To be Arab and proud, what a combination
Is it logically feasible?
It scares me,
I see those pictures of my grandmothers that I burnt.
I apologize to the mirror and the children
It’s not about you

Grandma visits me in my dream, passes her gentle loving hand on my forehead and forgives me.

My self-hatred is blinding my vision; the cowboys taught me that I am brown because I am dirty,
They invented Clorox. I washed me with Clorox so that I can fit.
I don’t want to be dirty.

Grandma visits me in my dream, passes her gentle loving hand on my forehead and forgives me.

Brown bleached girl got pregnant
She gave birth to a brown little boy who was holding a rock

I’m a mere rusty brown link on the chain of “us’s” identity
I happened to be a prime number
A second generation ya grandmother
Don’t blame me

Brown Jesus visits me in my dream, passes his gentle loving hand on my forehead and forgives me.

Rejection and realizing you've been rejected

I remember the first time i was rejected. I couldnt believe it. (we are talking about romantic rejection by the way) . I couldnt get over it for the longest time. I was so full of myself and couldn't comprehend, how can anyone in their right mind reject me. I thought I was unrejectable. Now I know better. I dont take personally as much as i used to. I realize people have different tastes and interests so therefore not everyone is supposed to be attracted to me. and when i dig a bit deeper , people who are not attracted to me I am not really attracted to them to start with, when i really look hard and honest inside myself , i realize that their rejection makes them look more attractive, because my focus becomes to get accepted by them instead of feeling weather there is a connection there. Now if things were this black and white , not a big problem. The real problem is when you are not sure weather you are being rejected or not, weather the person you are being involved with is just afraid or if they are really not into you. this confusion eats up a big part of the self esteem. and instead of focusing on how you feel about the person , you get sucked into speculating and interpreting this other person's signals (or the lack of signals)
recently i realized i have been rejected. i feel much better now that i am outside the speculation and guessing game. i hate mystery and guessing. so , i got rejected, good, better now than later, that means i am getting closer to my goal. i am burning down my rejection quota, anyway , someone who rejects me cannot be suitable for me . dont you think?