Module: COMP1800 Data Visualisation Coursework

Contribution: 100% of course ZIP file required, containing PDF report &
Python notebook

Module Leader: Prof. Chris Walshaw Due date: Friday 8th April 2022

This coursework should take an average student who is up-to-date with tutorial work
approximately 50 hours
Learning Outcomes:
1. Identify and discuss fundamental concepts related to visualisation.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of different types of data visualisation and identify
appropriate types of visualisation for various types of data.
3. Design, implement and evaluate interactive visualisation systems.
4. Apply visualisation tools and techniques to obtain insight from datasets.

Plagiarism is presenting somebody else’s work as your own. It includes:

copying information directly from the Web or books without referencing the
material; submitting joint coursework as an individual effort; copying another
student’s coursework; stealing or buying coursework from someone else and
submitting it as your own work. Suspected plagiarism will be investigated and
if found to have occurred will be dealt with according to the procedures set
down by the University.

All material copied or amended from any source (e.g. internet, books) must
be referenced correctly according to the reference style you are using.

Your work will be submitted for electronic plagiarism checking. Any attempt
to bypass our plagiarism detection systems will be treated as a severe
Assessment Offence.

Coursework Submission Requirements

• An electronic copy of your work for this coursework should be fully uploaded by
midnight (local time) on the Deadline Date.
• The last version you upload will be the one that is marked.
• For this coursework you must submit a single zip file containg your report, in an
Acrobat PDF document, and supporting code. In general, any text in the
document must not be an image (i.e. must not be scanned) and would normally
be generated from other documents (e.g. MS Office using "Save As .. PDF").
• There are limits on the file size (currently 2Gb).
 • Make sure that any files you upload are virus-free and not protected by a
password or corrupted otherwise they will be treated as null submissions.
• Comments on your work will be available from Moodle. The grade will be made
available in the portal.
• You must NOT submit a paper copy of this coursework.
• All coursework must be submitted as above.

The University website has details of the current Coursework Regulations, including
details of penalties for late submission, procedures for Extenuating Circumstances, and
penalties for Assessment Offences. See https://www.gre.ac.uk/student-services/regulations-
and-policies for details.

Detailed specification
You are to carry out a visual data exploration for ChrisCo, the fictional company whose sales and website
data we have been analysing throughout the module, using a Python Notebook (in Colab or Jupyter).

ChrisCo is a fictional, but nonetheless very successful company managing a range of venues across the UK.
ChrisCo collects a huge amount of data about individual customers visiting its venues using its loyalty card
scheme but this customer data has been aggregated/averaged to give information about the company’s 40
venues, each identified by a unique 3 letter code (e.g. ABC, XYZ, etc).

Data
Each student on the module has their own, randomised version of the dataset to explore. You will find your
data in the following csv files, where ID is your 9-digit student ID number (e.g. 001234567):

• https://tinyurl.com/ChrisCoDV/ID/VenueDailyVisitors.csv
listing the daily number of visitors to the company's 40 venues
• https://tinyurl.com/ChrisCoDV/ID/VenueAge.csv
the average age of visitors at each venue
• https://tinyurl.com/ChrisCoDV/ID/VenueDistance.csv
the maximum distance (miles) that visitors have travelled to each venue
• https://tinyurl.com/ChrisCoDV/ID/VenueDuration.csv
the average time (mins) that visitors spend at each venue
• https://tinyurl.com/ChrisCoDV/ID/VenueGender.csv
the percentage of visitors identifying as female at each venue
• https://tinyurl.com/ChrisCoDV/ID/VenueSpend.csv
the average spend (£) by visitors at each venue

Please contact the module leader if you cannot find your data files.

You should compile the data into two dataframes: one containing daily visitor data (one row for each date);
the other containing summary data (one row for each venue), compiled from all of the .csv files, including
the daily visitors.
Report
Your task is to investigate the data visually and present some conclusions about any characteristics you
discover, including correlations, seasonal behaviour, outliers, etc., together with a suggestion about how the
data might be best segmented, based on the total volume of visits at each venue.

The company is most interested in the high and medium volume venues but would like a summary of the
low volume venues plus any anomalies you identify in the data. You should also identify new venues that
have been opened during the year or venues that the company has closed during the year.

You should present your findings in the form of a pdf report for the company, i.e. based on the assumption
that the reader knows nothing about data visualisation. The report should include:
• A brief introduction to data visualisation (no more than ½ a page).
• A discussion of your findings, including a total of 8 visualisations (your mark will be capped if you
include more – see below under Grading Criteria). Each visualisation should be accompanied by two
paragraphs of text in which you should present:
o a justification for including that particular visualisation:
o a description of what the visualisation reveals about the data – do not assume that the
reader will recognise and understand correlations, seasonality and anomalies.
• A critical review of your work, with a discussion of how best practices were demonstrated and
applied (about ½ a page).
• A summary of the conclusions you have made about the data points (no more than ½ a page). You
are not required to make any business recommendations and the summary may contain conclusions
as bullet.

For the 8 visualisations you include, you should choose your most illuminating charts / plots and paste in a
screenshot. It is strongly recommended to use Insert > Screenshot in Word or the Windows snipping tool (or
similar) and to carefully crop each screenshot so that it shows only the visualisation. Also do not distort the
images when you resize them – if you do change the size make sure you maintain the aspect ratio.

The interactive visualisations (see below) should be included as 2 of the 8 visualisations in the report and for
these the screenshots should illustrate some aspect of the interactivity (e.g. zoom, hover tools, etc).

All 8 visualisations should be carefully numbered and labelled, with a self-explanatory title and legend (if
appropriate) and should be referred to in the text (e.g. "Figure 1 shows that …"). Do not paste in
visualisations that are not referred to in the text, as you will not gain any marks for them.

Finally, the order of the visualisations should be carefully considered, leading the reader through the data
exploration step by step and ideally with each visualisation leading on to the next one.

Notebook
Your Colab / Jupyter notebook should contain the details of your data exploration and support the report.
The markdown should indicate the purpose of each preceding / following code section but you do not have
to present your findings here.

The code should be written efficiently, so that you do not repeat unnecessary code in each section.

At least 2 of the visualisations in the notebook should be interactive and provide functionality to explore the
data in more detail. The markdown for these must include a description of available user interactions and
instructions on how to use the interactions to explore the data more fully.

You may include more than 8 visualisations in your notebook. You should then select the 8 most useful to
paste into your report.
Deliverables
You must upload a single zip file (with a .zip extension – do not use other formats) containing:
• The pdf report containing your 8 chosen visualisations.
• A supporting Python notebook (.ipynb) containing your data exploration. You may upload 2
notebooks if you have used both Jupyter & Colab (e.g. for the interactive visualisations).

Marking scheme
The report will be marked on the discussion and analysis, together with both the quality and impact of the
visualisations.

The notebook will be marked on its organisation, presentation and efficiency of coding. There are also marks
for the interactive visualisations.

achieved partially poorly/not marks

Task well achieved achieved
Report text (50%)
Introduction to data visualisation /10
Discussion – justification of visualisations chosen /10
Discussion – description of findings /10
Critical review /10
Data conclusions /10
Report visualisations (20%)
Presentation quality (labelling, legends, etc) /10
Value and impact (as part of the exploration) /10
Notebook (30%)
Organisation and presentation /10
Code efficiency (non-duplication) / 5
Interactive visualisations – functionality / 5
Interactive visualisations – instructions /10

Grading criteria
70-100% All requirements completed to an excellent standard

60-69% All requirements completed. However, there are a number of minor deficiencies in
significant areas.

50-59% All requirements completed. However, significant improvements could be made in many
areas.

40-49% All requirements completed. However, significant improvements could be made in all areas.

30-39% All requirements attempted but the overall level of understanding and performance is poor.

0-29% There are requirements missing or completed to a very inadequate standard which indicates
a very poor or non-existent level of understanding.

The report should be succinct and so must not contain more than 8 visualisations, although you may use
the technique of facetting (i.e. a number of subplots in a single figure). Reports with 9-10 visualisations will
be capped at 60% and those with 11 or more visualisations will be capped at 30%. However, your notebook
may contain as many visualisations as you need to carry out the investigation.