[nabs-l] Coping with Graphs and Other Visual Representations ofData

[Steve Jacobson]

Tina,

There are simply no absolute answers to this question, and the road you choose will very much depend upon your own strengths and skills.  I don't know 
what sort of background you already have and therefore apologize if I assume too much or too little.  My comments are from the perspective of a math 
major sometime ago and as a computer programmer/analyst so not all will apply.

First, the idea of getting your hands on a way to draw graphs is a good one.  Whatever you end up doing, you will be more successful if you truly 
understand what the various types of graphs show.  This is true even if you don't end up creating tactile versions.  It will help you know what questions to 
ask, and even to understand how else you might get the information conveyed.

For the purposes of a course, I would tend to concentrate on learning to understand graphs and work with a reader who is good at interpreting them.  The 
purpose of a course is to learn about a specific skill, the development of an efficient way to alternatively perform that skill doesn't have to be a part of 
learning.  When you are on the job, things will be more stable.  You would be dealing with statistics in a more or less stable way and you will most likely 
know in advance what it is you will be looking for.  In other words, you will have a chance to prepart alternatives for analyzing the data.

There are various tools that can reproduct graphs in a tactile format such as the Tiger braille printer.  There is also a company called Reprotronics which I 
think still has a system that will take a printed piece of paper and raise darker areas on swell paper.  The paper is expensive but it can work.  
Unfortunately, any system that simply creates a tactile version of something in print generally suffers from trying to show too much information making the 
results not real useful.  Generally, some sort of filtering or formatting has to be done by someone to make sense out of such a process, and this just may 
not be practical for a class.  It is something that could be useful if one were on a job where graphs were very important.  

Some work has been done to produce graphs in an audio fashion.  This can also have some value but I don't know how successfully it has been used to 
interpret data from another source.  

I don't know if anything here will help, but I hope it is somewhat useful.  I am sure I am omitting possibilities as well and I hope others will chime in.  My 
point here is really that there are options out there if you need to deal with graphs a lot, but trying to get a handle on such options during a relatively short 
course may not work.  The important thing is to try to understand graphs and what they are showing within the context of your course.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 09:21:24 -0600, Greg Aikens wrote:

>Hi Tina,
>I'm sorry if I misunderstood your original question.  I was thinking that being able to draw the graphs would give you access to a lot of the visual 
information and what the data represents.  With a well made tactile diagram made by a professional transcriber and some training on how to read them you 
would be able to feel a bar graph and know that one column represents 50 and another represents 35.  With the methods I suggested you definitely still 
need someone to tell you exactly what values the diagrams represent.  

>My only suggestion for this is to get your reader to read this information to you and then you could put it in your notes.  For bar graphs you could write 
something like: 
>Bar 1: Dogs 35
>Bar 2: cats 40 
>Bar 3: birds 15

>The same would work for pie charts and scattergrams.  For scattergrams I still recommend having someone draw you the diagram to accompany this list 
of info because it is a very visual way to analyze data.  It can be difficult to get an idea of the trend with just a list of points.  

>Hope this was more helpful. 

>Greg
>On Nov 19, 2010, at 10:45 PM, Tina Hansen wrote:

>> These are all good for drawing graphs. Now, how about the question of understanding data that graphs and other visual material is meant to 
represent? Does anyone have ideas for how to convey the data that is represented in either a table, bar chart, pie chart, scattergram, or whatever? What 
tools, tips, tricks or techniques have you used to gain access to this kind of information? Thanks. 
>> 
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