Master of Data science Data Visualization and Communication 1 Flashcards
6 cards from real MS-DS Master of Data science practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
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Which color scale is most appropriate for representing data that has a meaningful midpoint, such as temperature anomalies above and below average?
Answer: Diverging color scale
Diverging color scales use two contrasting hues radiating outward from a neutral midpoint, making them ideal for data with a meaningful center value where both directions of deviation need to be visually distinguished.
A data scientist wants to show how a company's market share changed across five product categories over three years. Which visualization is most suitable?
Answer: Grouped bar chart
A grouped bar chart allows direct comparison of multiple categories across multiple time periods simultaneously, making it easy to see both within-year category differences and year-over-year trends for each category.
What is the primary purpose of a tooltip in an interactive data visualization?
Answer: To reveal precise values for specific data points on hover
Tooltips provide exact underlying values when a user hovers over a data point, balancing clean overall chart design with the ability to access precise details on demand without cluttering the visual.
When communicating uncertainty in a model's predictions to a business audience, which visual element is most commonly used?
Answer: Confidence interval bands or error bars
Confidence interval bands and error bars directly encode the range of uncertainty around a central estimate, giving non-technical audiences an intuitive sense of prediction reliability without requiring statistical expertise.
Which principle of Gestalt psychology explains why data points placed close together are perceived as belonging to the same group in a scatter plot?
Answer: Proximity
The Gestalt principle of proximity states that objects near each other are perceived as a group; in scatter plots, clustered points naturally appear as distinct groupings because of their spatial closeness.
A presenter uses a y-axis that starts at 950 instead of 0 on a bar chart showing values between 955 and 975. What is the main problem with this choice?
Answer: It visually exaggerates differences between bars, potentially misleading the audience
Truncating the y-axis on a bar chart makes small absolute differences appear dramatically large relative to bar heights, distorting the viewer's perception of magnitude and potentially conveying a misleading sense of significant variation.