Making Data

2025-01-28

Rick Gilmore

Prelude

Lucaas (2007)

Dattani & Roser (2024)

Overview

Announcements

Last time…

Visualization in the arts, sports, & journalism

Your observations

  • Distinctive features of data viz in different fields?

Preliminary findings

Today

  • Making Data
  • Types of data

Making Data

Data are made, not born.

Gilmore 2025

No one really knows how the game is played…
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in the room where it happens

“The Room Where it Happens”, Leslie Odom Jr. and Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Hamilton”

How are data made?

  • By measurement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_measurement

https://www.ritual.fashion/pages/measurement-guide

What is measurement?

  • A procedure for mapping properties of X onto some numerical standard or scale Y
  • Metrology: The science of measurement
  • Psychometrics: The study of psychological measurement

Why ‘mapping’

flowchart TB
  A[Thing/Person]-- Procedure  -->B(Instrument)
  B --> C{Data}
Figure 1: Illustration of a mapping from observed entity to data 
flowchart TB
  A[Thing/Person]-- Procedure  -->B(Instrument)
  A[Thing/Person]-- Procedure-2  -->C(Instrument-2)
  B --> E{Data}
  C --> D{Data-2}
Figure 2: Illustration of multiple mappings from an observed entity to data

Data ~ quantitative terminology

  • Data a symbol of the thing measured, not the thing itself
  • E.g., Words are a symbol of the things they refer to
flowchart TB
  A[Cute animal with fur that purrs] --> B('cat')
  A ---> C('gato')
  A ---> D('chatte/chat')
  A ---> E('猫')
Figure 3: Mapping from concept/entity to a word.

Data reflects, selects, and deflects

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology, it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent must also as a deflection of reality

Burke (1968)

What is reflected, selected, deflected?

Lindsey (2024)

Stevens’ scales of measurement

Stevens (1946)

Questions about measurement

  • What’s the procedure for making this mapping?
  • What are the rules for assigning numbers/categories?
  • What can we do with the assigned numbers (summarize, depict)?

Types of data

In other domains

  • Business/economics
  • Politics
  • Sports
  • Entertainment
  • Weather

In psychology

  • Internal mental states
  • Behaviors
  • Physiological processes
  • Physical characteristics
  • Environmental properties

Examples of…

  • Internal mental states
  • Behaviors
  • Physiological processes
  • Physical characteristics
  • Environmental properties

How to measure…

  • Internal mental states
  • Behaviors
  • Physiological processes
  • Physical characteristics
  • Environmental properties

Scales of measurement

Stevens (1946)

Making data

Main points

  • Data are made
    • Map characteristics to quantities
    • By some measurement procedure
    • Reflect, but also select and deflect
  • Mapping has different types of scales (Stevens, 1946)
  • Scales determine i) permissible stats & ii) best visualizations

Next time

Types of figures

Resources

References

Burke, K. (1968). Language as Symbolic Action. University of California Press. Retrieved from https://www.ucpress.edu/books/language-as-symbolic-action/paper
Dattani, S., & Roser, M. (2024). What was the golden age of antibiotics, and how can we spark a new one? Our World in Data. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/golden-age-antibiotics
Lindsey, R. (2024, April 9). Climate change: Atmospheric carbon dioxide. Retrieved November 8, 2024, from http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
Lucaas. (2007). Talking Heads - Girlfriend is Better (from stop making sense. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r7X3f2gFz4&list=PLXTs9Ss_E9ARDEum9WgaJ67rvpnzogpsA&index=7
Stevens, S. S. (1946). On the theory of scales of measurement. Science (New York, N.Y.), 103, 677–680. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.103.2684.677