Our data was retrieved from the Integrated PostSecondary Data Education system. We were able to find public data regarding the most popular majors at Carleton over a 20 year period, starting in 2001 and ending in 2021. Our data is visualized using Flourish to make a bar graph video that shows each of the most popular majors from year to year, including the number of each of the majors listed on the graph. The viewer can either watch the bar graph move as it progresses from year to year, or move to a specific year by clicking and dragging the triangle on the bar at the bottom. This research seems to be more exploratory, as there are only raw data without much explanation behind it.
I think it’s really cool to see the growth of computer science as a major throughout a recent period in Carleton’s history. I think this visualization does a really good job of showing the change of majors, especially showing how much STEM has grown in amount of majors in the last 20 years, while the humanities are decreasing in popularity. Very readible graph as well!
One of the things I’m left with after looking at your visualization is wondering why Bio was such a dominant science for so long at Carleton. Growth in Computer Science majors tracks the growth in good jobs for the major, so that outlier makes sense, but why Biology and not some of the other sciences? Wonder if you all had any even theoretical ideas as to why.