Data Portrait

Goal

Students generate data about themselves.

Time

5’

Instructions

Draw on a piece of paper:

  • one square for each character in your name

  • circles indicating your relative age among your siblings (oldest, 2nd oldest)

  • a symbol that indicates your country of birth

  • your favourite mode of transportation: legs for walking, two circles for biking, a box with wheels for cars/trains and wings for flying

  • your birthday using crosses for the month and tick marks for the day

../_images/data_portrait.jpeg

Teaching notes

The Data Portrait is an easy start into a class or course on a data-related subject. There are several concepts that can be motivated with the portraits:

  • what data is

  • types of data

  • data collection

  • data visualization

  • conventions and bias

  • put the data from drawing into a spreadsheet or file and start evaluating it

In a presence class, your participants may want to hang up and present their artwork. The exercise works in an online or hybrid environment as well.

The first version of the data portrait I saw is attributed to Paula Gonzalez-Avalos