Analysis Without Data: Teaching Students to Tackle the VAST Challenge

Abstract

Fig. 1. Our four-stage proposed guideline, HDAV (Hypothesis-Driven Approach for VAST), for students tackling VAST Challenges.HDAV follows the practice of pre-registering hypotheses before visual analysis and experimental design [4,8], encouraging students to critically consider the analytic questions prior to analyzing the full dataset. Only after a student has fully articulated their hypotheses should they move to performing data analysis. The final arrow denotes that once the data analysis process begins, students should not return to forming hypotheses. Doing so could result in HARKing (Hypothesizing After Results are Known) [11] and false discoveries [32].