Blogs (3) >>

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Thu 27 Feb 2025 15:45 - 16:03 at Meeting Room 407 - Data Science #2

As data science and artificial intelligence continue to impact society, more and more people are learning how to manipulate data with code. To support these learners, program visualization tools automatically generate diagrams to show how code transforms data, in contrast to tools based on large language models (LLMs) that primarily focus on textual explanations. Although program visualization tools are popular among instructors, do novices find these tools usable and useful for data science programs that often manipulate datasets with many rows? To address this, we evaluate a popular, publicly available tool that generates diagrams for Python pandas code through a randomized, in-lab usability study with 17 data science novices. Despite minimal instruction on how to use the tool, novices found that program visualizations increased their confidence in comprehending and debugging code. In addition, even though the tool sometimes produced diagrams with many visual elements, participant performance on the study tasks was not negatively impacted. These findings suggest design guidelines for program visualization tools to help manage cognitive load for data science novices. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study that investigates how novices use program visualization tools to understand code that manipulates data tables, and suggests a future where novices can use automatically generated diagrams as a complement to LLM tools for effectively understanding unfamiliar programs in data science.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Thu 27 Feb

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

15:45 - 17:00
Data Science #2Papers at Meeting Room 407
15:45
18m
Talk
How Novices Use Program Visualizations to Understand Code that Manipulates Data Tables
Papers
Ylesia Wu UC San Diego, Qirui Zheng UC San Diego, Sam Lau University of California at San Diego
16:03
18m
Talk
Jupyter Analytics: A Toolkit for Collecting, Analyzing, and Visualizing Distributed Student Activity in Jupyter NotebooksGlobal
Papers
Zhenyu Cai EPFL, Richard Davis EPFL, Raphaël Mariétan École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Roland Tormey École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Pierre Dillenbourg École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
16:22
18m
Talk
Teaching Our Teacher Assistants to Thrive: A Reflexive, Inclusive Approach to Scalable Undergraduate Education
Papers
Lisa Yan UC Berkeley
16:41
18m
Talk
Toolkit for Educators of Data Science: Using physical computing to support data science education in the classroom.K12
Papers
Lorraine Underwood Lancaster University, Elizabeth Edwards Lancaster University, Elisa Rubegni Lancaster University, Steve Hodges Lancaster University, John Vidler Lancaster University, Joe Finney Lancaster University