Who Will Shape the Future of Data Visualization? Today’s Kids!
Seeing is not understanding: how to encourage data literacy early
I’ll start off with a confession — when I was a kid, I had no idea what data visualization was. Or, should I be totally frank? Growing up, I didn’t even know the meaning of “data.” It wasn’t until my early teens that I started understanding the meaning and value of “data.” After that, it took me a few more years to realize that data could be visualized. So, needless to say, my journey towards learning data visualization was a long one.
“The soul never thinks without an image.” — Aristotle
Today’s kids live in a completely different world. They are exposed to charts from a young age. But seeing is not understanding. Imagine this — you’re watching the news on TV, with your five-year-old playing next to you. The anchor discusses COVID-19 cases and walks the viewers through a line graph. Your kid looks up and says, “Daddy, what’s that?” What would be your answer? Or, imagine a slightly different scenario: you are an avid reader of The Economist. At one point, out of curiosity, your five-year-old picks up the latest issue of the magazine, opens it up, and asks, “Mommy, what’s this?” Would you simply say, “That’s a chart”? Or would you take the time to explain to your kid how data visualization works? With this in mind, the fundamental question that guided me as I was writing this piece was:
Given that today’s kids are growing up surrounded by graphs, how can we (parents, teachers, friends) help them learn how to better read and interpret data visualization?
To answer this question, I reached out to a few experts who have taught data visualization to kids and to a student:
- Jon Schwabish — senior fellow, Urban Institute and founder, PolicyViz. Jon developed a data visualization game, runs workshops for kids, and even wrote a paper on the topic of data visualization for kids.
- Sharon Hessney — math teacher and graph curator, The NYTimes Learning Network. Sharon leads The New York Times project What’s Going On in This Graph? together with Michael Gonchar.
- Michael Gonchar — editor, The NYTimes Learning Network. Michael leads The New York Times project What’s Going On in This Graph? together with Sharon Hessney.
- Greg Yarnall —history teacher at The Academy of Saint Elizabeth. Greg uses the What’s Going On in This Graph? project to teach his students data visualization skills.
- Lauren Iskander — student at The Academy of Saint Elizabeth. Lauren regularly participates in the What’s Going On in This Graph? project.
- Liv Buli — data journalist and book author. Liv wrote the book series “A Vizkidz Story” and runs data visualization workshops for kids.
First things first…at what age should kids start learning data visualization?
“As early as possible,” said every single person that I interviewed. Everyone agreed that kids would benefit greatly from learning data visualization at an early age. As soon as kids learn how to count, they should learn how to visualize what they count. Of course, no one would expect a two- or a three-year-old to build a Sankey diagram. Or a beeswarm. But wouldn’t it be great if kids could learn data visualization without even realizing that they are learning? The solution — try out a few games.
Liv’s daughter was only two when she started teaching her basic data visualization concepts. As you can imagine, this didn’t take place in a rigid school-like setting. Liv tried to have fun with data and charts, to make them less overwhelming. “Make it simple, make it fun,” pointed out Liv. An exercise that she did with her two-year-old was stacking up LEGO bricks to build bar charts on fun topics. Here are the game rules: first, gather a bunch of LEGO bricks and put them in a pile. Then, ask your kid to sort them by color or size. Finally, stack up the LEGO bricks with your kid to create bar charts. Doesn’t this sound like a fun exercise?
Jon mentioned how, around Halloween, his daughter gathered all the candy that she received and put it in a pile. Once she formed the pile, she sorted the candy and then built a bar chart. Just like Liv’s approach with LEGO, the Halloween exercise makes learning data visualization a fun (and delicious!) experience.
Liv’s LEGO game and Jon’s Halloween candy exercise are examples of activities that can help kids grasp concepts such as data understanding, sorting, and comparing, all core skills needed to start reading and creating graphs. As Greg, a history teacher at The Academy of Saint Elizabeth mentioned, kids are inherently visual to begin with, so learning data visualization comes naturally to them. Down the road, one of the biggest benefits of teaching data visualization skills to kids at an early age is that they’ll find numbers and data less scary by the time they start school.
In addition to developing data visualization exercises for kids, Liv is also the author of two books: Penelope Pie’s Pizza Party: A Vizkidz Story and Barnaby Barchart’s Beach Adventure. After working at the intersection of creative and data, Liv realized that it wasn’t always easy for adults to interpret data and graphs. This made her think that the best approach would be to start training kids, so that they become more skilled by the time they reach adulthood. She got down to work and published the book series Vizkidz. The first book, Penelope Pie’s Pizza Party: A Vizkidz Story, is about pie charts. The second book, Barnaby Barchart’s Beach Adventure, is about bar charts. In both books, kids are taken through the story and learn without knowing that they are learning. Liv encourages parents and teachers to make learning data visualization simple and fun, and to incorporate storytelling concepts that can make data and charts more accessible.
Once kids start school…
By the time most kids go to school, they are likely to have been exposed to some simple graphs, such as bar charts or line graphs. But do they have the skills to interpret graphs correctly? Do they know to evaluate the context? Are they equipped to question the data collection? If kids start school without any prior exposure to data visualization concepts, then the answer is likely no. The good news? There are solutions and structured exercises that have already been developed and tested.
One such exercise comes from The New York Times and it’s calls What’s Going On in This Graph?. Michael and Sharon lead this highly successful project and sat down with me to talk about their experience.
The What’s Going On in This Graph? project is a free, online, weekly feature of The New York Times Learning Network. Every week, The Learning Network releases a graph that was previously published in The New York Times. Teachers encourage their students to join the project by noticing and wondering. Every Wednesday, teachers from the American Statistical Association provide live moderation of student comments. By Friday morning, The New York Times Learning Network team reveals more information about the graph, including a free link to the article in which the graph was originally published.
The teaching method that The New York Times Learning Network uses — noticing and wondering — is a highly effective low-floor-and-high-ceiling approach. The questions posed on a weekly basis are accessible to all students and teachers, across all disciplines. You don’t have to be a math or science teacher to integrate data visualization into your curriculum. Although all answers are welcome, students are encouraged to think deeply and evaluate the evidence in the graphs. Throughout this process, students are advised to notice what’s on the graph, as well as what’s not on the graph. They are encouraged to wonder if the graph and the data are objective and true.
To date, The New York Times Learning Network has used over 33 types of graphs, across a wide variety of topics and levels of difficulty. As you can imagine, The New York Times publishes dozens of graphs every week. So I was curious about the criteria for selecting the weekly graphs. Sharon and Michael mentioned that they use the following well-defined set of criteria to select each graph:
- Students can relate to the graph
- The graph is a surprise
- Students can learn about the world they are in
- The topic and the data are timely
After talking to Michael and Sharon, I realized that it would be valuable to get a student’s perspective as well. And so, they connected me with Lauren. Lauren is a student at The Academy of Saint Elizabeth in New Jersey and has been participating in What’s Going On in This Graph? since the beginning of the project, as part of her history class. As I talked to Lauren, I noticed that she seemed deeply passionate about graphs and data. She shared with me her approach to noticing and wondering. Every week when The New York Times publishes a new graph, Lauren tries to use the knowledge that she’s accumulated to date to notice what’s in the graph, as well as what could potentially be missing. She carefully formulates her answers, and then publishes them on the forum. She’s always keen to see what other students are saying on the forum and exchange notes. Often, she logs back online to comment on other students’ notes and engage in discussions about the weekly graph.
What is Lauren’s favorite What’s Going On in This Graph? data visualization to date? A “vase” graph published in the October 12, 2020 article “The Shape(s) of a Crisis.” The graph shows the composition of the unemployed in the United States from January — September 2020. Lauren loved the way the unemployment rate was depicted in this data visualization. She was fascinated by the uniqueness of the chart type and thought that the topic was timely and relevant.
For Lauren, graphs are part of her day-to-day life, both in school and outside school. She is convinced that practice makes perfect, and that’s why she pays close attention not just to the graphs included in the What’s Going On in This Graph? project, but also to any graph that she sees in the media. After a few years of practice, she realized that understanding what’s in the graph is equally important to understanding what’s not in the graph (wise words!). She always takes the time to pause, and to understand the context and the data collection methodology before drawing any conclusions about the graph in front of her.
Greg is Lauren’s history teacher at The Academy of Saint Elizabeth in New Jersey. He strongly believes that graphs can be used in any discipline, not just in math and statistics, and is consistently encouraging his students to join the What’s Going On in This Graph? project.
I was curious to find out more about how students reacted when Greg first introduced them to data visualization, as I could bet that not many of them expected to work with graphs in a history class. Greg mentioned that students were initially worried about not having the necessary skills to work on data visualization assignments. Over time, his students became intrigued and realized that data and humanities can make a good team. His students also started noticing that data and charts are not always objective, and that there are different, more compelling ways to represent numbers and stats than simple tables. In other words, Greg was pleased to see that his students started developing data literacy and data visualization skills.
In addition to the What’s Going On in This Graph? project, parents and teachers can use other exercises to help kids learn data visualization. Jon mentioned an exercise that he did with kids between 9 and 11. He started by talking about basic graph types, including maps. After that, he moved from regular, simple maps to more complex and fun maps, such as a map of the nearest McDonald’s or a map of emojis. After giving kids the tools to start thinking critically about data, he used the Match It card game that he developed. This data visualization-themed game consists of 31 cards with six chart icons on each. There is one, and exactly one, identical chart icon on any two cards. Each kid got five minutes to explore the charts and then participated in a tournament.
Another easy and relatable exercise that Jon developed involved drawing. Kids were asked to draw a floor of their house. Most kids can draw a simple map. Then, Jon asked them to plot any data that they liked, such as differently-sized bubbles representing their favorite rooms or lines showing their paths through the house. Through this exercise, kids learned some basic data visualization concepts without even realizing that they were learning!
The kids of today, the adults of tomorrow
Graphs are everywhere. So, with the proper instruction, I’d expect today’s kids to become adults that are more proficient at visualizing and interpreting data than today’s adults. Besides parents, teachers, or friends, news organizations also play a role in shaping today’s kids. As Jon pointed out, news organizations can do a great job explaining to us how to read more advanced graphs.
On the other hand, as Sharon and Michael mentioned, because graphs are everywhere, there’s a danger for kids to start thinking that graphs are objective. So it is important for adults to start teaching kids how to think critically, to not necessarily accept the graph and the data at face value. In other words, it’s essential for kids to develop a toolbox. This is good for them and good for democracy — eventually, today’s kids will become more informed citizens.
Rebeca Pop is the founder of Vizlogue, a data visualization and storytelling lab that’s on a mission to help people communicate more effectively with data. Rebeca also teaches data visualization and storytelling at Northwestern University and at The University of Chicago.
Thank you to Mary Aviles for her keen editing eye.
