WORLDCOMP'08 Tutorial: Prof. Kevin Byrne

Parallel-Coordinate-Plots at Age 30: Why and How GeoDa Software Works as a Powerful and Intuitive Method for Geovisualizing Demographic Data Prof. Kevin Byrne Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA and St. Mary's University of Minnesota, Minnesota, USA Date: July 15, 2008 Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM Location: Platinum Room

Abstract



The method of Parallel-Coordinate-Plots (PCP) just arrived at its 30th anniversary. Its history is illustratively summarized as part of an hour-long tutorial demonstrating why and how GeoDa, free but broad-function software, has helped PCP’s persist as an effective technique for visualizing exploratory-geodemographic data.


Objectives



• that we are at Parallel-Coordinate-Plots’ third decade as an academic and professional tool, an enthusiastic but brief summary of its history is offered. (Focus is on the inventor of the Parallel Coordinate Plot, Alfred Inselberg.)
• Use of GeoDa software, a free package developed by the Spatial Analysis Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is covered. It has powerful capabilities to perform spatial analysis, multivariate spatial exploratory data analysis (ESDA), and other tasks.
• Several multivariate analyses, having been done using the PCP menu selection in GeoDa, are presented as mini-case examples.
• Workshop centerpiece to this is an iteration of “democratized data display” wherein audience helps identify census variables within a geo-demographic theme of interest. Using the tutor’s laptop we gather appropriate data-files and demo some tasks in ESRI’s ArcGIS, then GeoDa; lastly we explore three variables using PCP profiles in a “hands-on, talk-aloud” fashion.
• GeoDa is free and powerful, but has limited output capabilities. We cover how to screen grab final GeoDa displays and image-process them in Adobe Photoshop for presentation.

Intended Audience



Graduate students and early-career faculty in many WORLDCOMP sub-disciplines, especially CGVR and DMIN.


Biography of Instructor



Kevin Byrne holds a bachelor's degree in fine arts and graduate degrees each in cartography/urban geography and graphic design. Byrne guides information design and new-media planning for corporations, universities, colleges, and non-profit agencies. He has taught user-centered design, sustainable development, and science-baccalaureate courses at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for three decades. Byrne travels abroad regularly to conduct academic moderation for polytechnical institutions and writes for research, academic, and professional serials. He was trained in ESDA at SPACE, the interdisciplinary summer institute at the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS) in Santa Barbara, California. Byrne is currently on sabbatical pursuing an advanced degree in GIS/Geovisualization at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota.