Infographic Accessibility Activities
Unlike the primary data collected by students via poll, secondary data are information that has already been collected. This data can be presented as a list, on data cards, in a table, or the data set can be extracted from a visual representation of data such as a scatterplot. When beginning with secondary data, the first step is to interrogate the data selection and its meaning. Through attempting to determine what question the data presented is meant to answer, the student can pose new statistical questions and consider whether they can be answered with the data. Data problem solvers “utilize questioning throughout the statistical problem-solving process to make decisions with confidence, understanding that the art of communication with data is essential.”[26] Throughout the unit, students will identify what they notice and wonder to craft questions. Students can refer to the shared polling experience when confronted with new forms and wonder about the connections.
W. E. B. Du Bois used infographics to present complex socioeconomic data accessibly and compellingly. He sought to showcase the achievements, humanity, dignity, and potential of Black Americans in the face of racism, believing that “visual data could be a powerful weapon against racial prejudice.”[27] Du Bois gathered population demographic, education level, employment rate, and land ownership data. He and his students hand-colored the graphics to increase readability.[28]
Infographic Activity 1
Image 2. Examples of Infographics created by W.E.B Du Bois[29]
The teacher will share the images as examples of infographics created by W.E.B Du Bois to display data. Students will be presented with the images above and consider what they notice and wonder about the images. Students will independently jot their ideas down then share their ideas with 2 partners. While students are in small groupings, the teacher will record student responses and then display them when calling the small groups back to whole group.
Students will closely consider the City and Rural Population 1890 infographic. Challenge students to look for pattern or reasoning. Students should consider the following: How does this representation of data differ from other representations you have seen? Why might Du Bois choose to use bright colors? There are two sets of numbers in the green, blue, yellow, and red section. To help students discover the two variables in this graph, the teacher may need to prompt them to read the green section where there is a more complete caption written. Then students should be better positioned to recognize that the variables are the number of Black people living in an area and the population range of the area. What information is Du Bois trying to communicate?
Students should consider what the data point 734, 952 means in this context. Why is a spiral used for that number/category while lines are used for the city populations? What does the size of the sections communicate? Students may notice that the yellow section representing 37,699 appears to be drawn to scale compared to the green section representing 78,139 people; the green section is twice the size of the yellow just as 78,139 is approximately 2.07 times larger than 37,699.
What is missing from the graph? Students should notice that the population range of “the country and villages” category isn’t listed. What can be inferred about the population size of rural areas based on this graph? Rural populations probably meant less than 2,500 people. Students should pose a statistical question they believe this graph can answer: What survey question could have been asked to Black people in 1890 to categorize them the way they are represented in the infographic? Students may suggest that Black people were asked the following: What is the population of the city or town you live in? How many people live in your city or town? Students should produce a statistical question that investigates the Black population in rural and urban areas.
The teacher should display pictorial representations of histograms as a reminder of their features and inform students that they must attempt to represent the infographic data with a histogram. Students should consider what information is necessary to construct a histogram. A histogram is a way to represent data by grouping data values into intervals with the height of each bar showing the frequency of data values in its respective interval. Students must determine the intervals to use on the x-axis and how to measure the frequency on the y-axis.
Students may easily notice that since ranges are already provided in the infographic, they should be used in the histogram construction. They should consider the difficulty of representing a frequency of 8,025 and 734,952 on the same graph. How else might we represent the frequency other than using raw data? The teacher may prompt students by referring to the display listing previous student observations about the size of each section. Students should be prompted to consider the part to whole relationships evident in the infographic. All the colors and segments combined constitute the whole. Students should recognize that each color is a part of the whole and recall that part to whole relationships are represented as percentages. The teacher guides students to discover that percentages can represent frequency in a histogram. Students should fill in missing components of the table below.
Table 1. A frequency table to be completed by students.
|
Overall Population |
Raw Count of Black Residents |
Frequency (%) 
|
|
1 – 2,500 |
734,952 |
|
|
2,500 – 5,000 |
37,699 |
|
|
5,000 – 10,000 |
8,025 |
|
|
10,000 – |
78,139 |
In completing the table, students should notice that the population interval is incomplete—the maximum is not provided. 78,139 provides the number of Black people who lived in cities with populations over 10,000 in Georgia but the 1890 census indicates that cities with populations over 10,000 included Columbus with 17, 303 residents and as high as 65,533 residents in Atlanta. Students will realize that the last interval cannot be graphed because it is not an even interval and would result in a distorted graph.
Infographic Activity 2
Students will continue their study of pictorial representations of data with Mona Chalabi’s work. She says, “The way that I often start analyzing data is through relatively simple calculations that other people can replicate. In a way this makes the data that I’m using much more reliable.”[30] Chalabi argues that data visualization makes things feel more visceral as it zooms in on a specific aspect of the data. Students will analyze Mona Chalabi’s Instagram post of her Space in America infographic which compares the average parking space to the average solitary confinement cell in the United States. This illustration provides an ideal opportunity for students to conceptualize what the artist is communicating and to do the simple calculations to which she refers. The grid presents an opportunity for students to determine the area of each space in square units by simply counting. Given that the key indicates that each box represents 10 in x 10 in, students can determine the scale to be 1:100 and calculate the actual area using the scale drawing. Students will consider the following: How does the zoomed-in approach make data clear to the observer? What does the zoomed-in approach leave you wondering? How can zooming-in on data by making a quick sketch help you visualize what’s happening?
The second Chalabi infographic (Image 3) provides students with more data to analyze. They will compare five types of activities, across two household types and two genders. Teacher will provide examples of segmented bar graphs and students will compare Chalabi’s representation and determine whether her representation can be categorized as such. Given this much to unpack, students will spend considerable time close reading the infographic and the teacher will formally continue with the notice/wonder protocol.
Image 3. Screenshot of Instagram post[31]
Image 4. Budget Lab childcare graph[32]
Students will then proceed considering the following questions if they have not been raised by students in discussion: What conclusions can be made with the information provided? Ensure that students understand each category, including what is meant by the inequality symbol, and prompt them to look for trends and comparisons. Students should notice that parents tend to spend more time caring for children when the youngest child in the household is younger than six. Teacher should check for understanding, asking students to identify the form of care that both men and women spend nearly the same amount of time doing. Students should discuss and consider: Where is there a gap in information? Is there a way to determine the exact number of minutes spent on each activity? How can you estimate the minutes spent per day on each activity? What could be added to the infographic to make it possible to precisely show the number of minutes spent on each activity? The teacher will present students access to chart produced and posted by the Budget Lab (see resources). Students will investigate and compare the Budget Lab’s representation of data to Chalabi’s. Notably the chart represents 2025 data, so the point of analyzing is not to check for consistency but to compare data across representation forms. What trends seem to be consistent? The Lab’s representation has numbers on the y-axis unlike Chalabi’s; what might these numbers represent? Students will notice that they can toggle to view the chart data presented as a table instead of the chart image. Given this raw data, why was the range of numbers selected for the y-axis?
Comments: