MVE080 / MMG640 Scientific visualization Autumn 26
Course PM
MVE080/MMG640 course in scientific visualisation.
Contact details:
Sviatlana Shashkova sviatlana.shashkova@physics.gu.se
Miaowen Dong miaowen@chalmers.se
Student Representatives
TBA
Program
In this course you will learn about various concepts, techniques, and tools for visualisation of scientific data in two dimensions. The GU course code is MMG640. The Chalmers course code is MVE080. The schedule of the course is in TimeEdit - just search for the course code. Monday lectures will be given in the Euler lecture room; on Wednesdays, computer labs will take place in the computer rooms MV:F23-25, for the lecture, see TimeEdit.
The course is based on the online book Fundamentals of Data Visualization by Claus O. Wilke, the on-line ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis by Hadley Wickham and a review article The science of visual data communication: What works by Franconeri et al. We will use the grammar of graphics Python library plotnine, which is based on ggplot2. Hence, for help via searching engines, you can look for both ggplot and plotnine.
After each lecture, the slides, code used to produce some visuals, and relevant datasets will be uploaded.
Weekly homework is performed in groups of 3 people max and should be completed within two weeks. You can have two attempts. In this case, the first attempt should be submitted within a week from the date when the homework becomes available. In case of any unforeseen life circumstances, each group can ask for a deadline extension. This option is only available once during the course. The final version of the 4th homework should be submitted by December 9, 23:59.
Preliminary course outline (modified throughout the course):
*Computer lab: each Wednesday 08.00 - 09.45
It is not allowed to use ChatGPT or any other AI tool to directly answer any of the questions. Large language models can be excellent tools, e.g. for editing text, but using them to directly answer a question is bad practice, as i) you do not learn anything, and ii) these models are often incorrect - and confidently reporting an incorrect answer is unprofessional. Any direct usage of AI to answer questions will be considered cheating and reported.
- Monday 2026-11-02 13:15 - 15:00 : Course introduction
Please, bring your laptop if you wish to use it for the course assignments.
Relevant links:
Python basics tutorial
NumPy for MATLAB users
The Anaconda Python distribution
The correct environment can be set via this file MVE080.yaml and MVE080_mac.yaml for macOS users. If you have correctly installed Jupyter Notebooks and plotnine you will be able to run the following notebook : Hello_MVE080-1.ipynb.
- Wednesday 2026-11-04 10.00-11.45 :
- Monday 2026-11-09 13:15-15:00 :
- Wednesday 2026-11-11 10.00-11.45 :
- Monday 2026-11-16 13:15-15:00 :
- Wednesday 2026-11-18 10.00-11.45 :
- Monday 2026-11-23 13:15-15:00 :
- Wednesday 2026-11-25 08.00-11.45 : Computer lab only
- Monday 2026-11-30 13:15-15:00 :
- Wednesday 2026-12-02 10:00-11:45 :
- Monday 2026-12-07 13:15-15:00 :
- Wednesday 2025-12-09 08.00-9.45 :