I was listening to Data Stories Episode 22: NYT Graphics and D3 with Mike Bostock and Shan Carter today and I realized that while I’ve used D3.js for bar charts and mapping projections, I don’t really understand it. I never took the time to learn the fundamentals, so I’ve always been constrained to cobbling together things from other examples.

That needs to change.

Here is a list of resources I plan to go through. I should be able to relearn the basics fairly quickly so that I can spend time making charts of my own. I’ll update completed items with check marks as I go through them.

• Notes – D3js.org Introduction – Actually read the full thing, not skip 1/2 of it like I originally did.
• Chapter 2: Introducing D3 in Interactive Data Visualization for the Web
• Notes – Thinking with Joins by Mike Bostock – Joins are a foundational part of D3. In short, you are declaring a relationship between a selection and data.
• How Selections Work by Mike Bostock
• Notes – Three Little Circles by Mike Bostock – Manipulating circles with selections
• Nested Selections by Mike Bostock
• General Update Pattern, parts 1-3 by Mike Bostock – demonstrates D3’s general update pattern, where a data-join is followed by operations on the enter, update and exit selections
• Chapter 6: Drawing with Data in Interactive Data Visualization for the Web
• Chapter 7: Scales in Interactive Data Visualization for the Web
• Chapter 8: Axes in Interactive Data Visualization for the Web
• Object Constancy by Mike Bostock
• Transitions by Mike Bostock
• Let’s Make a Bar Chart, Parts 1-3 by Mike Bostock
• Let’s Make a Map by Mike Bostock
• Let’s Make a Bubble Map by Mike Bostock